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REPRESENTATIVE MEN, 



REPRESENTATIVE MEN 



^eben %cttmtfi 



BY 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



New York 
HOME BOOK COMPANY 

45 Vesey Street 



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Bequest 

Albert Adsit Olemons 

Aug. 24, 1938 

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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Uses of Great Men 9 

'--> II. Plato ; or, the Philosopher 39 

Plato ; New Readings 77 

) III. Swedenborg ; or, the Mystic 89 

IV. Montaigne ; or, the Skeptic 139 

\ V. Shakspeare ; or the Poet 175 

YI. Napoleon ; or, the Man of the World 205 

Vll. Goethe ; or, the Writer 239 



USES OF GREAT MEN. 



I. 

USES OF GREAT MEN. 



It is natural to believe in great men. If 
the companions of our childhood should turn 
out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it 
would not surprise us. All mythology opens 
with demigods, and the circumstance is high 
and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. 
In the legends of the Gautama, the first men 
ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. 

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. 
The world is upheld by the veracity of good 
men : they make the earth wholesome. They 
who lived with them found life glad and nu- 
tritious. Life is swe^t and tolerable only in 
our belief in such society ; and actually, or 
ideally, we manage to live with superiors. 
We call our children and our lands by their 
names. Their names are wrought into the 
verbs of language, their works and efhgies are 
in our houses, and every circumstance of the 
day recalls an anecdote of them. 

9 



lo IReptesentative ^en 



The search after the great is the dream of 
youth, and the most serious occupation of 
manhood. We travel into foreign parts to 
find his works, — if possible, to get a glimpse 
of him. But we are put off with fortune in- 
stead. You say, the English are practical ; 
the Germans are hospitable ; in Valencia, the 
climate is delicious ; and in the hills of Sacra- 
mento, there is gold for the gathering. Yes, 
but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich, 
and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots 
that cost too much. But if there were any 
magnet that would point to the countries and 
houses where are the persons who are intrin- 
sically rich and powerful, I would sell all, and 
buy it, and put myself on the road to-day. 

The race goes with us on their credit. The 
knowledge, that in the city is a man who in- 
vented the railroad, raises the credit of all the 
citizens. But enormous populations, if they 
be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, 
like hills of ants, or of fleas — the more, the 
worse. 

Our religion is the love and cherishing of 
these patrons. The gods of fable are the 
shining moments of great men. We run all 
our vessels into one mould. Our colossal 
theologies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, 
Mahometism, are the necessary and structural 
action of the human mind. The student of 
history is like a man going into a warehouse 
to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has 



TUscs ot (Brcat ^en ii 

a new article. If he go to the factory, he 
shall find that his new stuff still repeats the 
scrolls and rosettes which are found on the 
interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. 
Our theism is the purification of the human 
mind. Man can paint, or make, or think 
nothing but man. He believes that the great 
material elements had their origin from his 
thought. And our philosophy finds one 
essence collected or distributed. 

If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds 
of service we derive from others, let us be 
warned of the danger of modern studies, and 
begin low enough. We must not contend 
against love, or deny the substantial existence 
of other people. I know not what would 
happen to us. We have social strengths. Our 
affection towards others creates a sort of 
vantage or purchase which nothing will 
supply. I can do that by another which I 
cannot do alone. I can say to you what I 
cannot first say to myself. Other men are 
lenses through which we read our own minds. 
Each man seeks those of different quality 
from his own, and such as are good of their 
kind ; that is, he seeks other men, and the 
otherest. The stronger the nature, the more 
it is reactive. Let us have the quality pure. 
A Httle genius let us leave alone. A main 
difference betwixt men is, w^hether they attend 
their own affair or not. Man is that noble en- 



12 IRepcesentative ^en 



dogenous plant which grows, like the palm, 
from within, outward. His own affair, though 
impossible to others, he can open with celerity 
and in sport. It is easy to sugar to be sweet, 
and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal 
of pains to waylay and entrap that which of 
itself will fall into our hands. I count him a 
great man who inhabits a higher sphere of 
thought, into which other men rise with labor 
and difficulty ; he has but to open his eyes to 
see things in a true light, and in large rela- 
tions ; whilst they must make painful correc- 
tions, and keep a vigilant eye on many 
sources of error. His service to us is of like 
sort. It costs a beautiful person no exertion 
to paint her image on our eyes ; yet how 
splendid is that benefit ! It costs no more 
for a wise soul to convey his quality to other 
men. And every one can do his best thing 
easiest. "/<??/ de moyens, beaucoup d'' effete 
He is great who is what he is from nature, 
and who never reminds us of others. 

But he must be related to us, and our life 
receive from him some promise of explanation. 
I cannot tell what I would know ; but I have 
observed there are persons, who, in their char- 
acter and actions, answer questions which I 
have not skill to put. One man answers some 
questions which none of his contemporaries put, 
and is isolated. The past and passing relig- 
ions and philosophies answer some other 
question. Certain men affect us as rich 



iSXsce ot (5reat ^en 13 



possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to 
their times, — the sport, perhaps, of some in- 
stinct that rules in the air ; — they do not speak 
to our want. But the great are near : we know 
them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and 
fall into place. What is good is effective, 
generative ; makes for itself room, food, and 
allies. A sound apple produces seed, — a 
hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he 
is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating 
armies with his purpose, which is thus ex- 
ecuted. The river makes its own shores, and 
each legitimate idea makes its own channels 
and welcome, — harvest for food, institutions for 
expression, weapons to fight with, and disciples 
to explain it. The true artist has the planet 
for his pedestal ; the adventurer, after years 
of strife, has nothing broader than his own 
shoes. 

Our common discourse respects two kinds 
of use of service from superior men. Direct 
giving is agreeable to the early belief of men ; 
direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, 
as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of 
healing, magical power, and prophecy. The 
boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him 
wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. 
But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant 
of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and 
education is his unfolding. The aid we have 
from others is mechanical, compared with the 
discoveries of nature in us. What is thus 



14 IRepresentatlve ^cn 



learned is delightful In the doing, and the 
effect remains. Right ethics are central, and 
go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to 
the law of the universe. Serving others is 
serving us. I must absolve me to myself. 
" Mind thy affair," says the spirit : — " coxcomb, 
would you meddle with the skies, or with 
other people ? " Indirect service is left. Men 
have a pictorial or representative quality, and 
serve us in the intellect. Behmen and Sweden- 
borg saw that things were representative. 
Men are also representative ; first, of things, 
and secondly, of ideas. 

" As plants convert the minerals into food 
for animals, so each man converts some raw 
material in nature to human use. The invent- 
ors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron ; lead, 
glass, linen, silk, cotton ; the makers of tools 
the inventor of decimal notation ; the geom- 
eter; the engineer; musician, — severally 
make an easy way for all, through unknown 
and impossible confusions. Each man is, by 
secret liking, connected with some district of 
nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as 
Linnaeus, of plants ; Huber, of bees ; Fries, of 
lichens ; Van Mons, of pears ; Dalton of atomic 
forms ; Euclid, of lines ; Newton, of fluxions. 

A man is a centre for nature, running out 
threads of relation through every thing, fluid 
and solid, material and elemental. The earth 
rolls ; every clod and stone comes to the 
meridian : so every organ, function, acid, 



lUece of (Breat /IRcn 15 



crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the 
brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. 
Each plant has its parasite, and each created 
thing its lover and poet. Justice has already 
been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, 
to loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and cotton ; but 
how few materials are yet used by our arts ! 
The mass of creatures and of qualities are still 
hid and expectant. It would seem as if each 
waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy 
tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each 
must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the 
day in human shape. In the history of dis- 
covery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have 
fashioned a brain for itself. A magnet must 
be made man, in some Gilbert, or Swedenborg, 
or Oersted, before the general mind can come 
to entertain its powers. 

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages ; 
■ — a sober grace adheres to the mineral and bo- 
tanic kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, 
comes up as the charm of nature, — the glitter of 
the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity 
of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold, 
hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, 
and gas, circle us round in a wreath of 
pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, be- 
guile the day of life. The eye repeats every 
day the finest eulogy on things — " He saw 
that they were good." We know where to find 
them ; and these performers are reUshed all 
the more, after a little experience of the 



1 6 IRepresentative IKsen 



pretending races. We are entitled, also, to 
higher advantages. Something is wanting to 
science, until it has been humanized. The 
table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital 
play, in botany, music, optics, and architecture, 
another. There are advancements to numbers, 
anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little sus- 
pected at first, when, by union with intellect 
and will, they ascend into the life, and re- 
appear in conversation, character and politics. 
But this comes later. We speak now only 
of our acquaintance with them in their own 
sphere, and the way in which they seem to fas- 
cinate and draw to them some genius who oc- 
cupies himself with one thing, all his life long. 
The possibility of interpretation lies in the 
identity of the observer with the observed.. 
Each material thing has its celestial side ; has 
its translation, through humanity, into the 
spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays 
a part as indestructible as any other. And to 
these, their ends, all things continually ascend. 
The gases gather to the solid firmament : 
the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and 
grows ; arrives at the quadruped, and walks ; 
arrives at the man, and thinks. But also the 
constituency determines the vote of the repre- 
sentative. He is not only representative, but 
participant. Like can only be known by like. 
The reason why he knows about them is, that he 
is of them ; he has just come out of nature, or 
from being a part of that thing. Animated 



iSXeee of (3ceat /iBen 17 



chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, 
of zinc. Their quality makes this career ; and 
he can variously publish their virtues, because 
they compose him. Man, made of the dust 
of the world, does not forget his origin ; and 
all that is yet inanimate will one day speak 
and reason. Unpublished nature will have its 
whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz 
mountains will pulverize into innumerable Wer- 
ners, Von Buchs, and Beaumonts ; and the 
laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution 
I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys ? 

Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on 
the poles of the earth. This quasi omnipres- 
ence supplies the imbecility of our condition. 
In one of those celestial days, when heaven 
and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems 
a poverty that we can only spend it once ; we 
wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, 
that we might celebrate its immense beauty m 
many ways and places. Is this fancy? Well, 
in good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. 
How easily we adopt their labors ! Every ship 
that comes to America got its chart from Co- 
lumbus. Every novel is debtor to Homer. 
Every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane 
borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. 
Life is girt all around with a zodiac of sciences, 
the contributions of men who have perished to 
add their point of light to our sky. Engineer, 
broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, 
and every man, inasmuch as he has any science, 
2 



i8 IReprcscntatfve /IBen 



is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes 
and longitudes of our condition. These road- 
makers on every hand enrich us. We must 
extend the area of life, and multiply our re- 
lations. We are as much gainers by finding a 
new property in the old earth, as by acquiring 
a new planet. 

We are too passive in the reception of these 
material or semi-material aids. We must not 
be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step, 
— we are better served through our sympathy. 
Activity is contagious. Looking where others 
look, and conversing with the same things, we 
catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon 
said, " you must not fight too often with one 
enemy, or you will teach him all your art of 
war." Talk much with any man of vigorous 
mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of 
looking at things in the same light, and, on 
each occurrence, we anticipate his thought. 

Men are helpful through the intellect and 
the affections. Other help, I find a false ap- 
pearance. If you affect to give me bread and 
fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, 
and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither 
better nor worse : but all mental and moral 
force is a positive good. It goes out from you 
whether you will or not, and profits me whom 
you never thought of. I cannot even hear of 
personal vigor of any kind, great power of per- 
formance, without fresh resolution. We are 
emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's saying 



•Qlaes of Great /iRen 19 



of Sir Walter Raleigh, " I know that he can 
toil terribly," is an electric touch. So are Clar- 
endon's portraits, — of Hampden ; " who was 
of an industry and vigilance not to be tired 
out or wearied by the most laborious, and of 
parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle 
and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to 
his best parts " — of Falkland ; " who was so 
severe an adorer of truth, that he could as 
easily have given himself leave to steal, as to 
dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch, with- 
out a tingling of the blood ; and I accept the 
saying of the Chinese Mencius : " As age is the 
instructor of a hundred ages. When the 
manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid be- 
come intelligent, and the wavering, deter- 
mined." 

This is the moral of biography ; yet it is 
hard for departed men to touch the quick like 
our own companions, whose names may not 
last as long. What is he whom I never think 
of ? whilst in every solitude are those who suc- 
cor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful 
manners. There is a power in love to divine 
another's destiny better than that other can, 
and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his 
task. What has friendship so signaled as its 
sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us } 
We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, 
or of life. We are piqued to some purpose, 
and the industry of the diggers on the rail- 
road will not again shame us. 



20 "Representative ^en 



Under this head, too, falls that homage, very 
pure, as I think, which all ranks pay to the 
hero of the day, from Coriolanus and 
Gracchus, down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, 
Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the 
street ! The people cannot see him enough. 
They delight in a man. Here is a head and a 
trunk ! What a front ! What eyes ! Atlan- 
tean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, 
with equal inward force to guide the great 
machine ! This pleasure of full expression to 
that which, in their private experience, is 
usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, 
much higher, and is the secret of the reader's 
joy in literary genius. Nothing is kept back. 
There is fire enough to fuse the mountain of 
ore. Shakspeare's principal merit may be 
conveyed, in saying that he, of all men, best 
understands the English language, and can 
say what he will. Yet these unchoked chan- 
nels and floodgates of expression are only 
health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare's 
name suggests other and purely intellectual 
benefits. 

Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, 
with their medals, swords, and armorial coats, 
like the addressing to a human being thoughts 
out of a certain height, and presupposing his 
intelligence. This honor, which is possible in 
personal intercourse scarcely twice in a life- 
time, genius perpetually pays ; contented, if 
now and then, in a century, the proffer is ac- 



Uses of Orear Oscn 21 



cepted. The indicators of the values of mat- 
ter are degraded to a sort of cooks and con- 
fectioners, on the appearance of the indicators 
of ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geogra- 
pher of the supersensible regions, and draws 
on their map ; and, by acquainting us with 
new fields of activity, cools our affection for 
the old. These are at once accepted as the 
reality, of which the world we have conversed 
with is the show. 

We go to the gymnasium and the swimming- 
school to see the power and beauty of the 
body ; there is the like pleasure, and a higher 
benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of 
all kinds ; as, feats of memor}'-, of mathemat- 
ical combination, great power of abstraction, 
the transmutings of the imagination, even ver- 
satility, and concentration, as these acts ex- 
pose the invisible organs and members of the 
mind, which respond, member for member, to 
the parts of the body. For, we thus enter a 
new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by 
their truest marks, taught, with Plato, " to 
choose those who can, without aid from the 
eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth and 
to being." Foremost among these activities, 
are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, 
wrought by the imagination. When this 
wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a 
thousand times his force. It opens the deli- 
cious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires 
an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic 



22 IRepresentative ^en 



as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a 
book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets 
free our fancy, and instantly our heads are 
bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the 
floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real, be- 
cause we are entitled to these enlargements, 
and, once having passed the bounds, shall 
never again be quite the miserable pedants 
we were. 

The high functions of the intellect are so 
allied, that some imaginative power usually 
appears in all eminent minds, even in arith- 
meticians of the first class, but especially in 
meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. 
This class serve us, so that they have the 
perception of identity and the perception of 
reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakspeare, 
Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of 
these laws. The perception of these laws is 
a kind of metre of the mind. Little minds 
are little, through failure to see them. 

Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our 
delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of 
the herald. Especially when a mind of power- 
ful method has instructed men, we find the 
examples of oppression. The dominion of 
Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit 
of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke, — in religion 
the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the 
sects which have taken the name of each 
founder, are in point. Alas ! every man is 
such a victim. The imbecility of men is 



•glsee of Great UXscn 23 



always inviting the impudence of power. It 
is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to 
bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to 
defend us from itself. True genius will not im- 
poverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. 
If a wise man should appear in our village, 
he would create, in those who conversed with 
him, a new consciousnesss of wealth, by open- 
ing their eyes to unobserved advantages ; 
he would establish a sense of immovable 
equality, calm us with assurances that we 
could not be cheated ; as every one would dis- 
cern the checks and guaranties of condition. 
The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, 
the poor their escapes and their resources. 

But nature brings all this about in due 
time. Rotation is her remedy. The soul is 
impatient of masters, and eager for change. 
Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been 
valuable, " She had lived with me long enough." 
We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and 
none of us complete. We touch and go, and 
sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the 
law of nature. When nature removes a great 
man, people explore the horizon for a succes- 
sor ; but none comes and none will. His 
class is extinguished with him. In some 
other and quite different field, the next man 
will appear ; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but 
now a great salesman ; then a road-contractor ; 
then a student of fishes ; then a buffalo-hunt- 
ing explorer, or a semi-savage western general. 



24 IRcQxcsentsitivc Ifben 



Thus we make a stand against our rougher 
masters ; but against the best there is a finer 
remedy. The power which they communicate 
is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, 
we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, 
to which, also, Plato was debtor. 

I must not forget that we have a special 
debt to a single class. Life is a scale of de- 
grees. Between rank and rank of our great 
men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all 
ages, attached themselves to a few persons, 
who, either by the quality of that idea they 
embodied, or by the largeness of their recep- 
tion, were entitled to the position of leaders 
and law-givers. These teach us the qualities 
of primary nature, — admit us to the constitution 
of things. We swim, day by day, on a river 
of delusions, and are effectually amused with 
houses and towns in the air, of which the men 
about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. 
In lucid intervals we say, " Let there be an 
entrance opened for me into realities ; I have 
worn the fool's cap too long." We will know the 
meaning of our economies and politics. Give 
us the cipher, and, if persons and things are 
scores of a celestial music, let us read off the 
strains. We have been cheated of our reason ; 
yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a 
rich and related existence. What they know, 
they know for us. With each new mind, a 
new secret of nature transpires ; nor can the 
Bible be closed, until the last great man is 



Tllses of Great ilBen 25 



born. These men correct the delirium of the 
animal spirits, make us considerate, and en- 
gage us to new aims and powers. The vener- 
ation of mankind selects these for the highest 
place. Witness the multitude of statues, pict- 
ures, and memorials which recall their genius 
in every city, village, house, and ship : — 

" Ever their phantoms arise before us, 
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
At bed and table they lord it o'er us, 

With looks of beauty, and words of good." 

How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of 
ideas, the service rendered by those who in- 
troduce moral truths into the general mind ? — 
I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpet- 
ual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden, 
and prune an apple-tree, I am well enough 
entertained, and could continue indefinitely in 
the like occupation. But it comes to mind 
that a day is gone, and I have got this precious 
nothing done. I go to Boston or New York, 
and run up and down on my affairs : they are 
sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by the 
recollection of this price I have paid for a 
trifling advantage. I remember the peau 
d^ ajie, on which whoso sat should have his de- 
sire, but a piece of the skin was gone for 
every wish. I go to a convention of philan- 
thropists. Do what I can, I cannot keep my 
eyes off the clock. But if there should appear 
in the company some gentle soul who knows 



26 IRcprescntative IVscn 



little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, 
but who announces a law that disposes these 
particulars, and so certifies me of the equity 
which checkmates every false player, bankrupts 
every self-seeker, and apprises me of my in- 
dependence on any conditions of country, or 
time, or human body, that man liberates me ; 
I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore re- 
lation to persons. I am healed of my hurts. 
I am made immortal by apprehending my 
possession of incorruptible goods. Here is 
great competition of rich and poor. We live 
in a market, where is only so much wheat, or 
wool, or land ; and if I have so much more, 
every other must have so much less. I seem 
to have no good, without breach of good' man- 
ners. Nobody is glad in the gladness of 
another, and our system is one of war, of an 
injurious superiority. Every child of the 
Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It 
is our system ; and a man comes to measure 
his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds 
of his competitors. But in these new fields 
there is room : here are no self-esteems, no 
exclusions. 

I admire great men of all classes, those who 
stand for facts, and for thoughts ; I like rough 
and smooth, " Scourges of God," and " Dar- 
lings of the human race." I like the first 
Csesar ; and Charles V., of Spain ; and Charles 
XII., of Sweden ; Richard Plantagenet ; and 
Bonaparte, in France. I applaud a sufficient 



Illses of (3rcat /iRen 27 



man, an officer equal to his office ; captains, 
ministers, senators. I like a master standing 
firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, 
eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all 
men by fascination into tributaries and sup- 
porters of his power. Sword and staff, or 
talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the 
work of the world. But I find him greater, 
when he can abolish himself, and all heroes, 
by letting in this element of reason, irrespect- 
ive of persons ; this subtilizer, and irresistible 
upward force, into our thought, destroying 
individualism ; the power so great, that the 
potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch, 
who gives a constitution to his people ; a pon- 
tiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and 
releases his servants from their barbarous 
homages ; an emperor, who can spare his 
empire. 

But I intended to specify, with a little 
minuteness, two or three points of service. 
Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe ; 
but wherever she mars her creature with some 
deformity or defect, lays her poppies plenti- 
fully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes 
joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and 
incapable of seeing it, though all the world 
point their finger at it every day. The worth- 
less and offensive members of society, whose 
existence is a social pest, invariably think 
themselves the most ill-used people alive, and 
never get over their astonishment at the 



28 IRepregentatlve ^cn 



ingratitude and selfishness of their contempo- 
raries. Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, 
not only in heroes and archangels, but in 
gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contriv- 
ance that lodged the due inertia in every 
creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the 
anger at being waked or changed ? Altogether 
independent of the intellectual force in each, 
is the pride of opinion, the security that we 
are right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a 
mowing idiot, but uses what spark of percep- 
tign and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph 
in his or her opinion over the absurdities of 
all the rest. Difference from me is the meas- 
ure of absurdity. Not one has a misgiving 
of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought 
that made things cohere with this bitumen, 
fastest of cements ? But, in the midst of this 
chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes 
by, which Thersites too can love and admire. 
This is he that should marshal us the way we 
were going. There is no end to his aid. 
Without Plato, we should alniost lose our 
faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. 
W^e seem to want but one, but we want one. 
We love to associate with heroic persons, 
since our receptivity is unlimited ; and, with 
the great, our thoughts and manners easily 
become great. We are all wise in capacity, 
though so few in energy. There needs but 
one wise man in a company, and all are wise, 
so rapid is the contagion. 



TUscs ot (3reat /IBen 29 



Great men are thus a coUyrium to clear our 
eyes from egotism, and enable us to see other 
people and their works. But there are vices 
and follies incident to whole populations and 
ages. Men resemble their contemporaries, 
even more than their progenitors. It is 
observed in old couples, or in persons who 
have been housemates for a course of years, 
that they grow alike ; and, if they should live 
long enough, we should not be able to know 
them apart. Nature abhors these complais- 
ances, which threaten to melt the world into 
a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin 
agglutinations. The like assimilation goes on 
between men of one town, of one sect, of one 
political party ; and the ideas of the time are 
in the air, and infect all who breathe it. 
Viewed from any high point, the city of New 
York, yonder city of London, the western 
civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. 
We keep each other in countenance, and ex- 
asperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. 
The shield against the stingings of conscience, 
is the universal practice, or our contempora- 
ries. Again ; it is very easy to be as wise and 
good as your companions. We learn of our 
contemporaries what they know, without effort, 
and almost through the pores of the skin, 
We catch it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives 
at the intellectual and moral elevations of 
her husband. But we stop where they stop. 
Very hardly can we take another step. The 



30 1Representati\?c /IBen 



great, or such as hold of nature, and transcend 
fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, 
are saviors from these federal errors, and 
defend us from our contemporaries. They 
are the exceptions which we want, where all 
grows alike. A foreign greatness is the an- 
tidote for cabalism. 

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh our- 
selves from too much conversation with our 
mates, and exult in the depth of nature in 
that direction in which he leads us. What 
indemnification is one great man for popula- 
tions of pigmies ! Every mother wishes one 
son a genius, though all the rest should be 
mediocre. But a new danger appears in the 
excess of influence of the great man. His 
attractions warp us from our place. We have 
become underlings and intellectual suicides. 
Ah ! yonder in the horizon is our help : — 
other great men, new qualities, counterweights 
and checks on each other. We cloy of the 
honey of each peculiar greatness. Every 
hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire 
was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good 
Jesus, even, " I pray you, let me never hear 
that man's name again." They cry up the 
virtues of George Washington, — " Damn 
George Washington ! " is the poor Jacobin's 
whole speech and confutation. But it is 
human nature's indispensable defence. The 
centripetence augments the centrifugence. 
We balance one man with his opposite, and 



•©066 Of Great Hbcn 31 



the health of the state depends on the see- 
saw. 

There is, however, a speedy limit to the use 
of heroes. Every genius is defended from ap- 
proach by quantities of availableness. They 
are very attractive, and seem at a distance our 
own : but we are hindered on all sides from 
approach. The more we are drawn, the more 
we are repelled. There is something not solid 
in the good that is done for us. The best dis- 
covery the discoverer makes for himself. It 
has something unreal for his companion, until 
he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the 
Deity dressed each soul which he sends into 
nature in certain virtues and powers not com- 
municable to other men, and, sending it to 
perform one more turn through the circle of 
beings, wrote " JVof trafisferahle^^'' and " Good 
for this trip only,^^ on these garments of the 
soul. There is somewhat deceptive about the 
intercourse of minds. The boundaries are 
invisible, but they are never crossed. There 
is such good will to impart, and such good will 
to receive, that each threatens to become the 
other ; but the law of individuality collects its 
secret strength : you are you, and I am I, and 
so we remain. 

For Nature wishes every thing to remain 
itself; and, whilst every individual strives to 
grow and exclude, and to exclude and grow, to 
the extremities of the universe, and to impose 
the law of its being on every other creature, 



32 TRepresentatlve /Hben 



Nature steadily aims to protect each against 
every other. Each is self-defended. Nothing 
is more marked than the power by which in- 
dividuals are guarded from individuals, in a 
world where every benefactor becomes so 
easily a malefactor, only by continuation of 
his activity into places where it is not due ; 
where children seem so much at the mercy of 
their foolish parents, and where almost all 
men are too social and interfering. We 
rightly speak of the guardian angels of 
children. How superior in their security from 
infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and 
second thought ! They shed their own abun- 
dant beauty on the objects they behold There- 
fore, ehey are not at the mercy of such poor 
educators as we adults. If we huff and chide 
them, they soon come not to mind it, and get 
a self-reliance ; and if we indulge them to 
folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. 

We need not fear excessive influence. A 
more generous trust is permitted. Serve the 
great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no 
office thou canst render. Be the limb of their 
body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise 
thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain 
aught wider and nobler? Never mind the 
taunt of Boswellism : the devotion may easily 
be greater than the wretched pride which is 
guarding its own skirts. Be another : not thy- 
self, but a Platonist ; not a soul, but a Chris- 
tian ; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian ; not a 



•daes of (Brcat ISscn s$ 



poet, but a Shaksperian. In vain, the wheels 
of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces 
of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee 
there. On, and forever onward ! The micro- 
scope observes a monad or wheel-insect among 
the infusories circulating in water. Presently, 
a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to 
a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. 
The ever-proceeding detachment appears not 
less in all thought, and in society. Children 
think they cannot live without their parents. 
But, long before they are aware of it, the black 
dot has appeared, and the detachment taken 
place. Any accident will now reveal to them 
their independence. 

But greaf men: — the word is injurious. Is 
there caste ? is there fate ? What becomes of 
the promise to virtue ? The thoughtful youth 
laments the superfcetation of nature. " Gen- 
erous and handsome," he says, " is your hero ; 
but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country 
is his wheelbarrow ; look at his whole nation 
of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the 
dawn of history down, food for knives and 
powder ? The idea dignifies a few leaders, 
who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devo- 
tion ; and they make war and death sacred ; — 
but what for the wretches whom they hire and 
kill ? The cheapness of man is every day's 
tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should 
be low, as that we should be low ; for we must 
have society. 
3 



34 TRepresentatfve /iRen 



Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, 
society is a Pestalozzian school ; all are 
teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally 
served by receiving and by imparting. Men 
who know the same things, are not long the 
best company for each other. But bring to 
each an intelligent person of another experi- 
ence, and it is as if you let off water from a 
lake, by cutting a lower basin. It seems a 
mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is 
to each speaker, as he can now paint out his 
thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our 
personal moods, from dignity to dependence. 
And if any appear never to assume the chair, 
but always to stand and serve, it is because 
we do not see the company in a sufficiently 
long period for the whole rotation of parts to 
come about. As to what we call the masses, 
and common men; — there are no common 
men. All men are at last of a size ; and true 
art is only possible, on the conviction that 
every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. 
Fair play, and an open field, and freshest 
laurels to all who have won them ! But heaven 
reserves an equal scope for every creature. 
Each is uneasy until he has produced his pri- 
vate ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld 
his talent also in its last nobility and exalta- 
tion. 

The heroes of the hour are relatively great : 
of a faster growth ; or they are such, in whom, 
at the moment of success, a quality is ripe 



•dses of (3rcat ^en 35 



^vbich is then in request. Other days will de- 
mand other qualities. Some rays escape the 
common observer, and want a finely adapted 
eye. Ask the great man if there be none 
greater. His companions are ; and not the 
less great, but the more, that society cannot 
see them. Nature never sends a great man 
into the planet, without confiding the secret to 
another soul. 

One gracious fact emerges from these studies, 
— that there is true ascension in our love. 
The reputations of the nineteenth century will 
one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. 
The genius of humanity is the real subject 
whose biography is written in our annals. We 
must infer much, and supply many chasms in 
the record. The history of the universe is 
symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No 
man, in all the procession of famous men, is 
reason or illumination, or that essence we 
were looking for ; but is an exhibition, in some 
quarter, of new possibilities. Could we one 
day complete the immense figure which these 
flagrant points compose ! The study of many 
individuals leads us to an elemental region 
wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all 
touch by their summits. Thought and feel- 
ing, that break out there, cannot be im- 
pounded by any fence of personality. This is 
the key to the power of the greatest men, — 
their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of 
mind travels by night and by day, in concen- 



36 IRepresentatfve /iRen 



trie circles from its origin, and publishes itseli 
by unknown methods : the union of all minds 
appears intimate : what gets admission to one, 
cannot be kept out of any other : the smallest 
acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quar- 
ter, is so much good to the commonwealth of 
souls. If the disparities of talent and position 
vanish, when the individuals are seen in the 
duration which is necessary to complete the 
career of each ; even more swiftly the seeming 
injustice disappears, when we ascend to the 
central identity of all the individuals, and 
know that they are made of the same sub- 
stance which ordaineth and doeth. 

The genius of humanity is the right point of 
view of history. The qualities abide ; the 
men who exhibit them have now more, now 
less, and pass away ; the qualities remain on 
another brow. No experience is more fa- 
miliar. Once you saw phoenixes : they are 
gone ; the world is not therefore disenchanted. 
The vessels on which you read sacred emblems 
turn out to be common pottery ; but the sense 
of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read 
them transferred to the walls of the world. 
For a time, our teachers serve us personall}^ as 
metres or milestones of progress. Once they 
were angels of knowledge, and their figures 
touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw 
their means, culture, and limits ; r.nd they 
yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, 
if a few names remain so high, that we have 



TUges of ^reat /IRen 37 



not been able to read them nearer, and age 
and comparison have not robbed them of a 
ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in 
men for completeness, and shall content our- 
selves with their social and delegated quality. 
All that respects the individual is temporary 
and prospective, like the individual himself, 
who is ascending out of his limits, into a catho- 
lic existence. We have never come at the true 
and best benefit of any genius, so long as we 
believe him an original force. In the moment 
when he ceases to help us as a cause, he be- 
gins to help us move as an effect. Then he 
appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and 
will. The opaque self becomes transparent 
with the light of the First Cause. 

Yet, within the limits of human education 
and agency, we may say, great men exist that 
there may be greater men. The destiny of 
organized nature is amelioration, and who 
can tell its limits ? It is for man tatame the 
chaos ; on every side, whilst he lives, to scat- 
ter the seeds of science and of song, that cli- 
mate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and 
the germs of love and benefit may be multi- 
pUed. 



PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 



IK 

Plato ; or, The Philosopher. 



Among books, Plato only is entitled to 
Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, 
when he said, " Burn the libraries ; for, their 
value is in this book." These sentences con- 
tain the culture of nations ; these are the cor- 
ner-stone of schools ; these are the fountain- 
head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, 
arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, 
rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. 
There was never such range of speculation. 
Out of Plato come all things that are still 
written and debated among men of thought. 
Great havoc makes he among our originalities. 
We have reached the mountain from which all 
these drift bowlders were detached. The Bible 
of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, 
every brisk young man, who says in succession 
fine things to each reluctant generation, — 
Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, 
Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, — is some reader 
of Plato, translating into the vernacular, 

41 



42 IRepresentative IKbcn 



wittily, his good things. Even the men of 
grander proportion suffer some deduction from 
the misfortune (shall I say ?) of coming after 
this exhausting generalizes St. Augustine, 
Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg, 
Goethe, are likewise his debtors, and must say 
after him. For it is fair to credit the broadest 
generalizer with all the particulars deducible 
from his thesis. 

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato, 
— at once the glory and the shame of man- 
kind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have 
availed to add any idea to his categories. No 
wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of 
all civilized nations are his posterity, and are 
tinged with his mind. Plow many great men 
Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, 
to be /lis men, — Platonists ! the Alexandrians, 
a constellation of genius ; the Elizabethans, 
not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John 
Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Tay- 
lor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas 
Taylor ; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Miran- 
dola. Calvinism is in his Phaedo : Christian- 
ity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its 
philosophy, in its hand-book of morals, the 
Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysticism finds in 
Plato all its texts. This citizen of a town in 
Greece is no villager nor patriot. An English- 
man reads and says, " how English ! " a Ger- 
man — " how Teutonic ! " an Italian- -" how 
Roman and how Greek ! " As they say that 



Plato ; or, Zbc Ipbllosopber 45 



Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that 
everybody felt related to her, so Plato seems, 
to a reader in New England, an American 
genius. His broad humanity transcends all 
sectional lines. 

This range of Plato instructs us what to 
think of the vexed question concerning his 
reputed works, — what are genuine, what 
spurious. It is singular that wherever we find 
a man higher, by a whole head, than any of 
his contemporaries, it is sure to come into 
doubt, what are his real works. Thus, Homer, 
Plato, Raffaelle, Shakspeare. For these men 
magnetize their contemporaries, so that their 
companions can do for them what they can 
never do for themselves ; and the great man 
does thus live in several bodies ; and write, 
or paint, or act, by many hands ; and after 
some time, it is not easy to say what is the 
authentic work of the master, and what is only 
of his school. 

Plato, too, like every great man, consumed 
his own times. What is a great man, but one 
of great affinities, who takes up into himself 
all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? 
He can spare nothing ; he can dispose of 
everything. What is not good for virtue, is 
good for knowledge. Hence his contem- 
poraries tax him with plagiarism. But the 
inventor only knows how to borrow ; and 
society is glad to forget the innumerable 
laborers who ministered to this architect, and 



44 IReprcsentative jflBen 



reserves all its gratitude for him. When we are 
praising Plato, it seems we are praising quota- 
tions from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. 
Be it so. Every book is a quotation ; and 
every house is a quotation out of all forests, 
and mines, and stone quarries : and every 
man is a quotation from all his ancestors. 
And this grasping inventor puts all nations 
under, contribution. 

Plato absorbed the learning of his times, — 
Philolaus, Timaeus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, 
and what else ; then his master, Socrates ; 
and finding himself still capable of a larger 
synthesis, — beyond all example then or since, 
— he travelled into Italy, to gain what Pytha- 
goras had for him ; then into Egypt, and per- 
haps still further east, to import the other 
element, which Europe wanted, into the 
European mind. This breadth entitles him to 
stand as the representative of philosophy. 
He says, in the Republic, " Such a genius as 
philosophers must of necessity have, is wont 
but seldom, in all its parts, to meet in one 
man ; but its different parts generally spring 
up in different persons." Every man, who 
would do anything well, must come to it from 
a higher ground. A philosopher must be 
more than a philosopher. Plato is clothed 
with the powers of a poet, stands upon the 
highest place of the poet, and (though I 
doubt he wanted the decisive gift of lyric 
expression) mainly is not a poet, because he 



Plato ; or, tTbc ipbilosopbec 45 



chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior 
purpose. 

Great geniuses have the shortest biogra- 
phies. Their cousins can tell you nothing 
about them. They lived in their writings, 
and so their house and street life was trivial 
and commonplace. If you would know their 
tastes and complexions, the most admiring of 
their readers most resembles them. Plato, 
especially, has no external biography. If he 
had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing 
of them. He ground them all into paint. 
As a good chimney burns its smoke, so a phi- 
losopher converts the value of all his fortunes 
into his intellectual performances. 

He was born 430 A. C, about the time of 
the death of Pericles ; was of patrician con- 
nection in his times and city ; and is said to 
have had an early inclination for war ; but in 
his twentieth year, meeting with Socrates, was 
easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and re- 
mained for ten years his scholar, until the 
death of Socrates. He then went to Megara ; 
accepted the invitations of Dion and of Diony- 
sius, to the court of Sicily ; and went thither 
three times, though very capriciously treated. 
He travelled into Italy ; then into Egypt, 
where he stayed a long time ; some say three, 
— some say thirteen years. It is said, he 
went farther, into Babylonia : this is uncertain. 
Returning to Athens, he gave lessons, in the 
Academy, to those whom his fame drew 



46 IReprcsentative /iRcn 



thither ; and died, as we have received it, in 
the act of writing, at eighty-one years. 

But the biography of Plato is interior. We 
are to account for the supreme elevation of 
this man, in the intellectual history of our 
race, — how it happens that, in proportion to 
the culture of men, they become his scholars ; 
that, as our Jewish Bible has implanted itself 
in the table-talk and household life of every 
man and woman in the European and Ameri- 
can nations, so the writings of Plato have pre- 
occupied every school of learning, every lover 
of thought, every church, every poet, — making 
it impossible to think, on certain levels, except 
through him. He stands between the truth 
and every man's mind, and has almost im- 
pressed language, and the primary forms of 
thought, with his name and seal. 1 am struck, 
in reading him, with the extreme modernness 
of his style and spirit. Here is the germ of 
that Europe we know so well, in its long his- 
tory of arts and arms : here are all its traits, 
already discernible in the mind of Plato, — 
and in none before him. It has spread itself 
since into a hundred histories, but has added 
no new element. This perpetual modernness 
is the measure of merit, in every work of art ; 
since the author of it was not misled by any- 
thing short-lived or local, but abode by real 
and abiding traits. How Plato came thus to 
be Europe, and philosophy, and almost liter- 
ature, is the problem for us to solve. 



IPlato ; or, Zbc pbUosopbec 47 



This could not have happened, without a 
sound, sincere, and catholic man, able to 
honor, at the same time, the ideal, or laws of 
the mind, and fate, or the order of nature. 
The first period of a nation, as of an individ- 
ual, is the period of unconscious strength. 
Children cry, scream and stamp with fury, un- 
able to express their desires. As soon as 
they can speak and tell their want, and the 
reason of it, they become gentle. In adult 
life, whilst the perceptions are obtuse, men 
and women talk vehemently and superlatively, 
blunder and quarrel : their manners are full of 
desperation ; their speech is full of oaths. 
As soon as, with culture, things have cleared 
up a little, and they see them no longer in 
lumps and masses, but accurately distributed, 
they desist from that weak vehemence, and 
explain their meaning in detail. If the 
tongue had not been framed for articulation, 
man would still be a beast in the forest. 
The same weakness and want, on a higher 
plane, occurs daily in the education of ardent 
young men and women. " Ah ! you don't 
understand me ; I have never met with any 
one who comprehends me : " and they sigh 
and weep, write verses, and walk alone, — fault 
of power to express their precise meaning. 
In a month or two, through the favor of their 
good genius, they meet some one so related as 
to assist their volcanic estate ; and, good 
communication being once established, they 



4.8 IRepresentatfvc jfflben 



are thenceforward good citizens. It is ever 
thus. The progress is to accuracy, to skill, to 
truth, from blind force. 

There is a moment, in the history of every 
nation, when, proceeding out of this brute 
youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripe- 
ness, and have not yet become microscopic : 
so that man, at that instant, extends across 
the entire scale ; and, with his feet still 
planted on the immense forces of night, con- 
verses, by his eyes and brain, with solar and 
stellar creation. That is the moment of adult 
health, the culmination of power. 

Such is the history of Europe, in all points ; 
and such in philosophy. Its early records, al- 
most perished, are of the immigrations from 
Asia, bringing with them the dreams of bar- 
barians ; a confusion of crude notions of mor- 
als, and of natural philosophy, gradually sub- 
siding, through the partial insight of single 
teachers. 

Before Pericles, came the Seven Wise 
Masters ; and we have the beginnings of ge- 
ometry, metaphysics, and ethics : then the par- 
tialists, — deducing the origin of things from 
flux or water, or from air, or from fire, or from 
mind. All mix with these causes mythologic 
pictures. At last, comes Plato, the distributor, 
who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or 
whooping ; for he can define. He leaves with 
Asia the vast and superlative ; he is the ar- 
rival of accuracy and intelligence. " He shall 



Plato ; or, Zbc Ipbtlosopbec 49 



be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and 
define." 

This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is 
the account which the human mind gives to it- 
self of the constitution of the world. Two 
cardinal facts lie forever at the base ; the one, 
and the two. — i. Unity, or Identity; and, 2. 
Variety. We unite all things, by perceiving 
the law which pervades them ; by perceiving 
the superficial differences, and the profound 
resemblances. But every mental act, — this 
very perception of identity or oneness, recog- 
nizes the difference of things. Oneness and 
otherness. It is impossible to speak, or to 
think, without embracing both. 

The mind is urged to ask for one cause of 
many effects ; then for the cause of that ; and 
again the cause, diving still into the profound : 
self-assured that it shall arrive at an absolute 
and sufficient one, — a one that shall be all. 
" In the midst of the sun is the light, in the 
midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of 
truth is the imperishable being," say the Vedas. 
All philosophy, of east and west, has the same 
centripetence. Urged by an opposite neces- 
sity, the mind returns from the one, to that 
which is not one, but other or many; from 
cause to effect ; and affirms the necessary ex- 
istence of variety, the self-existence of both, 
as each is involved in the other. These 
strictly-blended elements it is the problem of 
thought to separate, and to reconcile. Their 
4 



50 IRcpresentativc Ifbcn 



existence is mutually contradictory and exclu- 
sive ; and each so fast slides into the other, 
that we can never say what is one, and what 
it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in the 
highest as in the lowest grounds, when we con- 
template the one, the true, the good, — as in 
the surfaces and extremities of matter. 

In all nations, there are minds which incline 
to dwell in the conception of the fundamental 
Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of 
devotion lose all being in one Being. This 
tendency finds its highest expression in the re- 
ligious writings of the East, and chiefly, in the 
Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavat 
Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana. Those writings 
contain little else than this idea, and they rise 
to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it. 

The Same, the Same : friend and foe are of 
one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the 
furrow, are of one stuff ; and the stuff is such, 
and so much, that the variations of forms are 
unimportant. " You are fit " (says the 
supreme Krishna to a sage) "to apprehend 
that you are not distinct from me. That 
which I am, thou art, and that also is this 
world, with its gods, and heroes, and man- 
kind. Men contemplate distinctions, because 
they are stupefied with ignorance." " The 
words /and mine constitute ignorance. What 
is the great end of all, you shall now learn 
from me. It is soul, — one in all bodies, per- 
vading, uniform, perfect, preeminent over 



Plato; oXrZbc ipbilosopbcc 51 



nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, 
omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, 
independent, unconnected with unreaUties, 
with name, species, and the rest, in time past, 
present, and to come. The knowledge that 
this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one's 
own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of 
one who knows the unity of things. As one 
diffusive air, passing through the perforations 
of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a 
scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, 
though its forms be manifold, arising from the 
consequences of acts. When the difference of 
the investing form, as that of god, or the rest, 
is destroyed, there is no distinction." " The 
whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, 
who is identical with all things, and is to be 
regarded by the wise, as not differing from, 
but as the same as themselves. I neither am 
going nor coming ; nor is my dwelling in any 
one place ; nor art thou, thou ; nor are others, 
others ; nor am I, I." As if he had said, " All 
is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu ; and 
animals and stars are transient painting ; and 
light is whitewash ; and durations are decep- 
tive ; and form is imprisonment ; and heaven 
itself a decoy." That which the soul seeks is 
resolution into being, above form, out of Tar- 
tarus, and out of heaven, — liberation from 
nature. 

If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, 
in which all things are absorbed, action tends 



52 l^cpxcscnttitivc /!5en 



directly backwards to diversity. The first is 
the course of gravitation of mind ; the second 
is the power of nature. Nature is the mani- 
fold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. 
Nature opens and creates. These two prin- 
ciples reappear and interpenetrate all things, 
all thought ; the one, the many. One is being ; 
the other, intellect : one is necessity ; the 
other, freedom : one, rest ; the other, motion : 
one, power ; the other, distribution : one, 
strength ; the other pleasure : one, conscious- 
ness ; the other, definition : one, genius ; the 
other, talent : one, earnestness ; the other, 
knowledge : one, possession ; the other, trade : 
one, caste ; the other, culture : one king ; the 
other, democracy : and, if we dare carry these 
generalizations a step higher, and name the 
last tendency of both, we might sa}^, that the 
end of the one is escape from organization, — 
pure science ; and the end of the other is the 
highest instrumentality, or use of means, or 
executive deity. 

Each student adheres, by temperament and 
by habit, to the first or to the second of these 
gods of the mind. By religion, he tends to 
unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. 
A too rapid unification, and an excessive appli- 
ance to parts and particulars, are the twin 
dangers of speculation. 

To this partiality the history of nations 
corresponded. The country of unity, of im- 
movable institutions, the seat of a philosophy 



fslato ; or, Zbc ipbilosopbec 53 



delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in 
doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, 
unimplorable, immense fate, is Asia ; and it 
realizes this fate in the social institution of 
caste. On the other side, the genius of Europe 
is active and creative : it resists caste by cult- 
ure ; its philosophy was a discipline ; it is a 
land of arts, inventions, trade, freedom. If 
the East loved infinity, the West delighted in 
boundaries. 

European civility is the triumph of talent, 
the extension of system, the sharpened under- 
standing, adaptive skill, delight in forms, 
delight in manifestation, in comprehensible 
results. Pericles, Athens, Greece, had been 
working in this element with the joy of genius 
not yet chilled by any foresight of the 
detriment of an excess. They saw before 
them no sinister political economy ; no omi- 
nous Malthus ; no Paris or London ; no pitiless 
subdivision of classes, — the doom of the pin- 
makers, the doom of the weavers, of dressers, 
of stockingers, of carders, of spinners, of col- 
liers ; no Ireland; no Indian caste, superin- 
duced by the efforts of Europe to throw it off. 
The understanding was in its health and 
prime. Art was in its splendid novelty. 
They cut the Pentelican marble as if it were 
snow, and their perfect works in architecture 
and sculpture seemed things of course, not 
more difficult than the completion of a new 
ship at the Medford yards, or new mills at 



54 IKepresentative Nscn 



Lowell. These things are in course, and may 
be taken for granted. The Roman legion, 
Byzantine legislation, English trade, the 
saloons of Versailles, the cafes of Paris, the 
steam-mill, steamboat, steam-coach, may all 
be seen in perspective ; the town-meeting, the 
ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press. 

Meantime, Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern 
pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in 
which all things are absorbed. The unity of 
Asia, and the detail of Europe ; the infinitude 
of the Asiatic soul, and the defining, result-lov- 
ing, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera- 
going Europe, — Plato came to join, and by 
contact to enhance the energy of each. The 
excellence of Europe and Asia are in his 
brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy 
expressed the genius of Europe ; he substructs 
the religion of Asia, as the base. 

In short, a balanced soul was born, percep- 
tive of the two elements. It is as easy to be 
great as to be small. The reason why we do 
not at once believe in admirable souls, is 
because they are not in our experience. In 
actual life, they are so rare, as to be incred- 
ible ; but, primarily, there is not only no 
presumption against them, but the strongest 
presumption in favor of their appearance. 
But whether voices were heard in the sky, or 
not ; whether his mother or his father dreamed 
that the infant man-child was the son of 
Apollo ; whether a swarm of bees settled on 



Plato ; or, Zbc ipbdosopber 55 



his lips, or not ; a man who could see two 
sides of a thing was born. The wonderful 
synthesis so familiar in nature ; the upper and 
the under side of the medal of Jove ; the 
union of impossibilities, which reappears in 
every object ; its real and its ideal power, — 
was now, also, transferred entire to the con- 
sciousness of a man. 

The balanced soul came. If he loved 
abstract truth, he saved himself by propound- 
ing the most popular of all principles, the 
absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges 
the judge. If he made transcendental dis- 
tinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all 
his illustrations from sources disdained by 
orators, and polite conversers ; from mares 
and puppies ; from pitchers and soup-ladles ; 
from cooks and criers ; the shops of potters, 
horse-doctors, butchers, and fishmongers. He 
cannot forgive in himself a partiality, but is 
resolved that the two poles of thought shall 
appear in his statement. His argument and 
his sentence are self-poised and spherical. 
The two poles appear ; yes, and become two 
hands, to grasp and appropriate their own. 

Every great artist has been such by synthe- 
sis. Our strength is transitional, alternating ; 
or, shall I say, a thread of two strands. The 
sea-shore, sea seen from shore, shore seen 
from sea ; the taste of two metals in contact ; 
and our enlarged powers at the approach and 
at the departure of a friend ; the experience 



56 'Representative l^cn 



of poetic creativeness, which is not found in 
staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in 
transitions from one to the other, which must 
therefore be adroitly managed to present as 
much transitional surface as possible; this 
command of two elements must explain the 
power and the charm of Plato. Art expresses 
the one, or the same by the dii^erent. Thought 
seeks to know unity in unity ; poetry to show 
it by variety ; that is, always by an object or 
symbol. Plato keeps the two vases, one of 
aether and one of pigment, at his side, and in- 
variably uses both. Things added to things, 
as statistics, civil history, are inventories. 
Things used as language are inexhaustibly 
attractive. Plato turns incessantly the obverse 
and the reverse of the medal of Jove. 

To take an example : — The physical phi- 
losophers had sketched each his theory of the 
world ; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of 
spirit; theories mechanical and chemical in 
their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, 
studious of all natural laws and causes, feels 
these, as second causes, to be no theories of 
the world, but bare inventories and lists. To 
the study of nature he therefore prefixes the 
dogma, — " Let us declare the cause which led 
the Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose 
the universe. He was good ; and he who is 
good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, 
he wished that all things should be as much 
as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught 



Plato; or, Zbc ipbilosopber 57 



by wise men, shall admit this as the prime 
cause of the origin and foundation of the 
world, will be in the truth." "All things are 
for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of 
everything beautiful." This dogma animates 
and impersonates his philosophy. 

The synthesis which makes the character of 
his mind appears in all his talents. Where 
there is great compass of wit, we usually find 
excellences that combine easily in the living 
man, but in description appear incompatible. 
The mind of Plato is not to be exhibited by a 
Chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended 
by an original mind in the exercise of its 
original power. In him the freest abandon- 
ment is united with the precision of a geometer. 
His daring imagination gives him the more 
solid grasp of facts ; as the birds of highest 
flight have the strongest alar bones. His 
patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged 
by an irony so subtle that it stings and par- 
alyzes, adorn the soundest health and strength 
of frame. According to the old sentence, " If 
Jove should descend to the earth, he would 
speak in the style of Plato." 

With this palatial air, there is, for the direct 
aim of several of his works, and running through 
the tenor of them all, a certain earnestness, 
which mounts, in the RepubHc, and in the 
Phaedo, to piety. He has been charged with 
feigning sickness at the time of the death of 
Socrates. But the anecdotes that have come 



58 IRepreeentative /iBen 



down from the times attest his manly inter- 
ference before the people in his master's behalf, 
since even the savage cry of the assembly to 
Plato is preserved ; and the indignation to- 
wards popular government, in many of his 
pieces, expresses a personal exasperation. He 
has a probity, a native reverence for justice 
and honor, and a humanity which makes him 
tender for the superstitions of the people. 
Add to this, he believes that poetry, prophecy, 
and the high insight, are from a wisdom of 
which man is not master ; that the gods never 
philosophize ; but, by a celestial mania, these 
miracles are accomplished. Horsed on these 
winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits 
.worlds which flesh cannot enter ; he saw the 
souls in pain ; he hears the doom of the judge ; 
he beholds the penal metempsychosis ; the 
Fates, with the rock and shears ; and hears 
the intoxicating hum of their spindle. 

But his circumspection never forsook him. 
One would say, he had read the inscription on 
the gates of Busyrane, — " Be bold ; " and on the 
second gate, — " Be bold, be bold and evermore 
be bold;" and then again had paused well at 
the third gate, — "Be not too bold." His 
strength is like the momentum of a falling 
planet ; and his discretion, the return of its due 
and perfect curve, — so excellent is his Greek 
love of boundary, and his skill in definition. 
In reading logarithms, one is not more secure, 
than in following Plato in his flights. Nothing 



IPlato ; or, ZTbc IPbilosopbcc 59 



can be colder than his head, when the light- 
nings of his imagination are playing in the sky. 
He has finished his thinking, before he brings 
it to the reader ; and he abounds in the sur- 
prises of a literary master. He has that opu- 
lence which furnishes, at every turn, the precise 
weapon he needs. As the rich man wears no 
more garments, drives no more horses, sits in 
no more chambers, than the poor, — but has 
that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, 
which is fit for the hour and the need ; so Plato, 
in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the 
fit word. There is, indeed, no weapon in all 
the armory of wit which he did not possess and 
use, — epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, 
satire, and irony, down to the customary and 
polite. His illustrations are poetry and his 
jests illustrations. Socrates' profession of 
obstetric art is good philosophy ; and his find- 
ing that word " cookery," and " adulatory art," 
for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us a substan- 
tial service still. No orator can measure in 
effect with him who can give good nicknames. 
What moderation, and understatement, and 
checking his thunder in mid volley ! He has 
good-naturedly furnished the courtier and 
citizen with all that can be said against the 
schools. " For philosophy is an elegant thing, 
if any one modestly meddles with it ; but, if he 
is conversant with it more than is becoming, 
it corrupts the man." He could well afford 
to be generous, — he, who from the sunlike 



6o IReprescntatiPe fKitcn 



centrality and reach of his vision, had a faith 
without cloud. Such as his perception, was 
his speech : he plays with the doubt, and 
makes the most of it : he paints and quibbles ; 
and by and by comes a sentence that moves 
the sea and land. The admirable earnest 
comes not only at intervals, in the perfect yes 
and no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. 
*' I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these 
accounts, and consider how I may exhibit my 
soul before the judge in a healthy condition. 
Wherefore, disregarding the honors that most 
men value, and looking to the truth, I shall 
endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I 
can and, when I die, to die so. And I invite 
all other men, to the utmost of my power ; and 
you, too, I in turn invite to this contest, which, 
I affirm, surpasses all contests here." 

He is a great average man one who, to the 
best thinking, adds a proportion and equality 
in his faculties, so that men see in him their 
own dreams and glimpses made available, and 
made to pass for what they are. A great com- 
mon sense is his warrant and qualification to 
be the world's interpreter. He has reason, as 
all the philosophic and poetic class have : but 
he has, also, what they have not, — this strong 
solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the 
appearances of the world, and build a bridge 
from the streets of cities to the Atlantis. He 
omits never this graduation, but slopes his 
thought, however picturesque the precipice on 



Plato; or, ^be ipbilosopber 6i 



one side, to an access from the plain. He 
never writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into 
poetic rapture. 

Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He 
could prostrate himself on the earth, and cover 
his eyes, whilst he adored that which cannot 
be numbered, or gauged, or known, or 
named : that of which everything can be 
affirmed and denied : that "which is entity 
and nonentity." He called it super-essential. 
He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, 
to demonstrate that it was so, — that this Being 
exceeded the limits of intellect. No man 
ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable. 
Having paid his homage, as for the human 
race, to the Illimitable, he then stood erect, and 
for the human race affirmed, " And yet things 
are knowable ! " — that is, the Asia in his mind 
was first heartily honored, — the ocean of love 
and power,, before form, before will, before 
knowledge, the Same, the Good, the One ; and 
now, refreshed and empowered by this wor- 
ship, the instinct of Europe, namely, culture, 
returns ; and he cries, Yet things are know- 
able ! They are knowable, because, being 
from one, things correspond. There is a scale : 
and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of 
matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is 
our guide. As there is a science of stars, 
called astronomy ; a science of quantities 
called mathematics^ a science of qualities, 



62 IRcpresentative /Ren 



called chemistry; so there is a science of 
sciences, — I call it Dialectic, — which is the in- 
tellect discriminating the false and the true. 
It rests on the observation of identity and di- 
versity ; for, to judge, is to unite to an object 
the notion which belongs to it. The sciences, 
even the best, — mathematics, and astronomy, 
are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey 
offers, even without being able to make any 
use of it. Dialectic must teach the use of 
them. " This is of that rank that no intellect- 
ual man will enter on any study for its own 
sake, but only with a view to advance himself 
in that one sole science which embraces all." 
" The essence or peculiarity of man is to 
comprehend the whole ; or that which in the 
diversity of sensations, can be comprised 
under a rational unity." " The soul which 
has never perceived the truth, cannot pass in- 
to the human form." I announce to men the 
Intellect. I announce the good of being inter- 
penetrated by the mind that made nature : 
this benefit, namely, that it can understand 
nature, which it made and maketh. Nature is 
good, but intellect is better : as the law-giver 
is before the law-receiver. I give you joy, O 
sons of men ! that truth is altogether whole- 
some ; that we have hope to search out what 
might be the very self of everything. The 
misery of man is to be balked of the sight of 
essence, and to be stuffed with conjecture : 
but the supreme good is reality ; the supreme 



IPlato; or, ^bc ipbilosopber 65 



beauty is reality ; and all virtue and all felic- 
ity depend on this science of the real : for 
courage is nothing else than knowledge : the 
fairest fortune that can befall man, is to be 
guided by his d^mon to that which is truly 
his own. This also is the essence of justice, 
— to attend every one his own ; nay, the no- 
tion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except 
through direct contemplation of the divine 
essence. Courage, then, for " the persuasion 
that we must search that which we do not know, 
will render us, beyond comparison, better, 
braver, and more industrious, than if we 
thought it impossible to discover what we do 
not know, and useless to search for it." He 
secures a position not to be commanded, by his 
passion for reality ; valuing philosophy only 
as it is the pleasure of conversing with real 
being. 

Thus, full of the genius of Europe, he said, 
Culture. He saw the institutions of Sparta, 
and recognized more genially, one would say, 
than any since, the hope of education. He 
delighted in every accomplishment, in every 
graceful and useful and truthful performance; 
above all, in the splendors of genius and intel- 
lectual achievement. " The whole of life, O 
Socrates," said Glauco, " is, with the wise the 
measure of hearing such discourses as these." 
What a price he sets on the feats of talent, on 
the powers of Pericles, of Isocrates, of Par- 
menides ! What price, above p^'ce on the 



64 TRepresentativc /Hben 



talents themselves ! He called the several 
faculties, gods, in his beautiful personation. 
What value he gives to the art of gymnastics 
in education ; what to geometry ; what to 
music ; what to astronomy, whose appeasing 
and medicinal power he celebrates ! In the 
Timaeus, he indicates the highest employment 
of the eyes. " By us it is asserted, that God 
invented and bestowed sight on us for this 
purpose, — that, on surveying the circles of in- 
telligence in the heavens, we might properly 
employ those of our own minds, which, though 
disturbed when compared with the others that 
are uniform, are still allied to their circula- 
tions ; and that, having thus learned, and be- 
ing naturally possessed of a correct reasoning 
faculty, we might, by imitating the uniform 
revolutions of divinity, set right our own wan- 
derings and blunders." And in the Republic, 
— " By each of these disciplines, a certain or- 
gan of the soul is both purified and reanimated, 
which is blinded and buried by studies of an- 
other kind ; an organ better worth saving than 
ten thousand eyes, since truth is perceived by 
this alone." 

He said, Culture ; but he first admitted its 
basis, and gave immeasurably the first place to 
advantages of nature. His patrician tastes laid 
stress on the distinctions of birth. In the 
doctrine of the organic character and disposi- 
tion is the origin of caste. " Such as were fit 
to govern, into their composition the informing 



IPlato ; or, XLbc ipbilosopbec 65 



Deity mingled gold : into the military, silver ; 
iron and brass for husbandmen and artificers." 
The East confirms itself, in all ages, in this 
faith. The Koran is explicit on this point of 
caste. " Men have their metal, as of gold 
and silver. Those of you who were the worthy 
ones in the state of ignorance, will be the 
worthy ones in the state of faith, as soon as 
you embrace it." Plato was not less firm. 
" Of the five orders of things, only four can 
be taught to the generality of men." In the 
Republic, he insists on the temperaments of 
the youth, as the first of the first. 

A happier example of the stress laid on 
nature, is in the dialogue with the young 
Theages, who wishes to receive lessons from 
Socrates. Socrates declares that, if some 
have grown wise by associating with him, no 
thanks are due to him ; but, simply, whilst 
they were with him, they grew wise, not be- 
cause of him ; he pretends not to know the 
way of it. " It is adverse to many, nor can 
those be benefited by associating with me, 
whom the Daemon opposes ; so that it is not 
possible for me to live with these. With many, 
however, he does not prevent me from convers- 
ing, who yet are not at all benefited by associat- 
ing with me. Such, O Theages, is the associa- 
tion with me ; for, if it pleases the God, you 
will make great and rapid proficiency : you 
will not, if he does not please. Judge whether 
it is not safer to be instructed by some one of 
5 



66 IReprcsentattve /IBen 



those who have power over the benefit which 
they impart to men, than by me, who benefit 
or not, just as it may happen." As if he had 
said, " I have no system. I cannot be answer- 
able for you. You will be what you must. If 
there is love between us, inconceivably deli- 
cious and profitable will our intercourse be ; if 
not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy 
me. I shall seem to you stupid, and the rep- 
utation I have, false. Quite above us, be- 
yond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity 
or repulsion laid. All my good is magnetic, 
and I educate, not by lessons, but by going 
about my business." 

He said, Culture ; he said, Nature : and he 
failed not to add, " There is also the divine." 
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly 
tends to convert itself into a power, and organ- 
izes a huge instrumentality of means. Plato, 
lover of limits, loved the illimitable, saw the 
enlargement and nobility which come from 
truth itself and good itself, and attempted, as 
if on the part of the human intellect, once for 
all, to do it adequate hom.age, — homage fit for 
the immense soul to receive, and yet homage 
becoming the intellect to render. He said, 
then, " Our faculties run out into infinity, and 
return to us thence. We can define but a 
little way ; but here is a fact which will not be 
skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is 
suicide. All things are in a scale ; and, begin 
where we will, ascend and ascend. All things 



IPIato ; or, Zbc pbilosopber 67 



are symbolical ; and what we call results are 
beginnings," 

A key to the method and completeness of 
Plato is his twice bisected line. After he has 
illustrated the relation between the absolute 
good and true, and the forms of the intelligible 
world, he says : — " Let there be a line cut in 
two unequal parts. Cut again each of these 
two parts, — one representing the visible, the 
other the intelligible world, — and these two 
new sections, representing the bright part and 
the dark part of these w^orlds, you will have, 
for one of the sections of the visible W'Orld, — 
images, that is, both shadows and reflections ; 
for the other section, the objects of these im- 
ages, — that is, plants, animals, and the w^orks 
of art and nature. Then divide the intelli- 
gible world in like manner ; the one section 
will be of opinions and hypotheses, and the 
other section, of truths." To these four sec- 
tions, the four operations of the soul corre- 
spond, — conjecture, faith, understanding, rea- 
son. As every pool reflects the image of the 
sun, so every thought and thing restores us an 
image and creature of the supreme Good. 
The universe is perforated by a million chan- 
nels for his activity. All things mount and 
mount. 

All his thought has this ascension ; in 
Phaedrus, teaching that " beauty is the most 
lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and 
shedding desire and confidence through the 



68 IRepresentative /Kben 



universe, wherever it enters ; and it enters, in 
some degree, into all things : but that there is 
another, which is as much more beautiful than 
beauty, as be'auty is than chaos ; namely, 
wisdom, which our wonderful organ of sight 
cannot reach unto, but which, could it be seen, 
would ravish us with its perfect reality." He 
has the same regard to it as the source of 
excellence in works of art. " When an artificer, 
in the fabrication of any work, looks to that 
which always subsists according to the same ; 
and, employing a model of this kind, expresses 
its idea and power in his work ; it must fol- 
low, that his production should be beautiful. 
But when he beholds that which is born and 
dies, it will be far from beautiful." 

Thus ever : the Banquet is a teaching in 
the same spirit, familiar now to all the poetry, 
and to all the sermons of the world, that the 
love of the sexes is initial ; and symbolizes, at 
a distance, the passion of the soul for that 
immense lake of beauty it exists to seek. 
This faith in the Divinity is never out of mind, 
and constitutes the limitation of all his dogmas. 
Body cannot teach wisdom ; — God only. In 
the same mind, he constantly affirms that 
virtue cannot be taught ; that it is not a 
science, but an inspiration ; that the greatest 
goods are produced to us through mania, and 
are assigned to us by a divine gift. 

This leads me to that central figure, which 
he has established in his Academy, as the 



Plato ; or, Ebc ipbilosopbcr 69 



organ through which every considered opinion 
shall be announced, and whose biography he 
has likewise so labored, that the historic facts 
are lost in the light of Plato's mind. Socrates 
and Plato are the double star, which the most 
powerful instruments will not entirely separate. 
Socrates, again, in his traits and genius, is the 
best example of that synthesis which consti- 
tutes Plato's extraordinary power. Socrates, 
a man of humble stem, but honest enough ; of 
the commonest history ; of a personal home- 
liness so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit 
in others,— the rather that his broad good 
nature and exquisite taste for a joke invited the 
sally, which was sure to be paid. The players 
personated him on the stage ; the potters 
copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. He 
was a cool fellow, adding to his humor a per- 
fect temper, and a knowledge of his man, be 
he who he might whom he talked with, which 
laid the companion open to certain defeat in 
any debate, — and in debate he immoderately 
delighted. The young men are prodigiously 
fond of him, and invite him to their feasts, 
whither he goes for conversation. He can 
drink, too ; has the strongest head in Athens ; 
and, after leaving the whole party under the 
table, goes away, as if nothing had happened, 
to begin new dialogues with somebody that is 
sober. In short, he was what our country- 
people call an old one. 

He affected a good many citizen-like tastes, 



70 IRepresentative /iRen 



was monstrously fond of Athens, hated trees, 
never wilHngly went beyond the walls, knew 
the old characters, valued the bores and philis- 
tines, thought everything in Athens a little 
better than anything in any other place. He 
was plain as a Quaker in habit and speech, 
affected low phrases,, and illustrations from 
cocks and quails, soup-pans and sycamore- 
spoons, grooms and farriers, and unnameable 
offices, — especially if he talked with any super- 
fine person. He had a Franklin-like wisdom. 
Thus, he showed one who was afraid to go 
on foot to Olympia, that it was no more than 
his daily walk within doors, if continuously 
extended, would easily reach. 

Plain old uncle as he was, with his great 
ears, — an immense talker, — the rumor ran, 
that, on one or two occasions, in the war with 
Boeotia, he had shown a determination which 
had covered the retreat of a troop ; and there 
was some story that, under cover of folly, he 
had, in the city government, when one day 
he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a 
courage in opposing singly the popular voice, 
which had well-nigh ruined him. He is very 
poor ; but then he is hardy as a soldier, and 
can live on a few olives ; usually, in the strict- 
est sense, on bread and water, except when 
entertained by his friends. His necessary ex- 
penses were exceedingly small, and no one 
could live as he did. He wore no under gai 
ment ; his upper garment was the same for 



Iplato ; or, ^be ipbilosopber 71 



summer and winter ; and he went barefooted ; 
and it is said that, to procure the pleasure, 
which he loves, of talking at his ease all day 
with the most elegant and cultivated young 
men, he will now and then return to his shop, 
and carve statues, good or bad, for sale. 
However that be, it is certain that he had 
grown to delight in nothing else than this con- 
versation ; and that, under his hypocritical 
pretense of knowing nothing, he attacks and 
brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine 
philosophers of Athens, whether natives, or 
strangers from Asia Minor and the islands. 
Nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so 
honest, and really curious to know ; a man 
who was willingly confuted, if he did not 
speak the truth, and who willingly confuted 
others, asserting what was false ; and not less 
pleased when confuted than when confuting ; 
for he thought not any evil happened to men,' 
of such a magnitude as false opinion respect- 
ing the just and unjust. A pitiless disputant, 
who knows nothing, but the bounds of whose 
conquering intelligence no man had ever 
reached ; whose temper was imperturbable ; 
whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and 
sportive ; so careless and ignorant as to dis- 
arm the wariest, and draw them, in the pleas- 
antest manner, into horrible doubts and con- 
fusion. But he always knew the way out; 
knew it, yet would not tell it. No escape ; he 
drives them to terrible choices by his dilem- 



72 IRcprcsentative /iBen 



mas, and tosses the Hippiases and Gorgiases, 
with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses 
his balls/ The tyrannous realist ! — Meno has 
discoursed a thousand times, at length, on 
virtue, before many companies, and very well, 
as it appeared to him ; but, at this moment, he 
cannot even tell what it is, — this cramp-fish of 
a Socrates has so bewitched him. 

This hard-headed humorist, whose strange 
conceits, drollery, and bonhommie, diverted 
the young patricians, whilst the rumor of his 
sayings and quibbles gets abroad every day, 
turns out, in the sequel, to have a probity as 
invincible as his logic and to be either insane, 
or, at least, under cover of this play, enthusi- 
astic in his religion. When accused before 
the judges of subverting the popular creed, he 
affirms the immortality of the soul, the future 
reward and punishment ; and, refusing to re- 
cant, in a caprice of the popular government, 
was condemned to die, and sent to the prison. 
Socrates entered the prison, and took away all 
ignominy from the place, which could not be a 
prison, whilst he was there. Crito bribed the 
jailer; but Socrates would not go out by 
treachery. " Whatever inconvenience ensue, 
nothing is to be preferred before justice. 
These things I hear like pipes and drums, 
whose sound makes me deaf to everything 
you say." The fame of this prison, the fame 
of the discourses there, and the drinking of 
the hemlock, are one of the most precious 
passages in the history of the world. 



Plato ; or, Zbc ipbilosopbec 73 



The rare coincidence, in one ugly body, of 
the droll and the martyr, the keen street and 
market debater with the sweetest saint known 
to any history at that time, had forcibly struck 
the mind of Plato, so capacious of these con- 
trasts ; and the figure of Socrates, by a neces- 
sity, placed itself in the foreground of the 
scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellect- 
ual treasures he had to communicate. It was 
a rare fortune, that this ^sod of the mob, and 
this robed scholar, should meet, to make each 
other immortal in their mutual faculty. The 
strange synthesis, in the character of Socrates, 
capped the synthesis in the mind of Plato. 
Moreover, by this means, he was able, in the 
direct way, and without envy, to avail himself 
of the wit and weight of Socrates, to which 
unquestionably his own debt was great ; and 
these derived again their principal advantage 
from the perfect art of Plato. 

It remains to say, that the defect of Plato 
in power is only that which results inevitably 
from his quality. He is intellectual in his 
aim ; and, therefore, in expression, literary. 
Mounting into heaven, driving into the pit, ex- 
pounding the laws of the state, the passion of 
love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the 
parting soul, — he is literary, and never other- 
wise. It is almost the sole deduction from 
the merit of Plato, that his writings have not, 
— what is, no doubt, incident to this regnancy 
of intellect in his work, — the vital authority 



74 IReprcsentative /llben 



which the screams of prophets and the ser- 
mons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. 
There is an interval ; and to cohesion, contact 
is necessary. 

I know not what can be said in reply to this 
criticism, but that we have come to a fact in 
the nature of things : an oak is not an orange. 
The qualities of sugar remain with sugar, and 
those of salt, with salt. 

In the second place, he has not a system. 
The dearest defenders and disciples are at 
fault. He attempted a theory of the universe, 
and his theory is not complete or self-evident. 
One man thinks he means this, and another, 
that : he has said one thing in one place, and 
the reverse of it in another place. He is 
charged with having failed to make the transi- 
tion from ideas to matter. Here is the world, 
sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece 
of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a 
mark of haste, or botching, or second thought ; 
but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds 
and patches. 

The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. 
Plato would willingly have a Platonism, a 
known and accurate expression for the world, 
and it should be accurate. It shall be the 
world passed through the mind of Plato, — 
nothing less. Every atom shall have the Pla- 
tonic tinge ; every atom, every relation or 
quality you knew before, you shall know 
again and find here, but now ordered ; not 



UMato; or, ^be ipbilosopbec 75 



nature, but art. And you shall feel that Alex- 
ander indeed overran, with men and horses, 
some countries of the planet ; but countries, 
and things of which countries are made, ele- 
ments, planet itself, laws of planet and of men, 
have passed through this man as bread into 
his body, and become no longer bread, but 
body : so all this mammoth morsel has become 
Plato. He has clapped copyright on the 
world. This is the ambition of individualism. 
But the mouthful proves too large. Boa con- 
strictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. 
He falls abroad in the attempt ; and biting, 
gets strangled : the bitten world holds the 
biter fast by his own teeth. There he per- 
ishes : unconquered nature livQ3 on, and for- 
gets him. So it fares with all : so must it fare 
with Plato. In view of eternal nature, Plato 
turns out to be philosophical exercitations. 
He argues on this side, and on that. The 
acutest German, the lovingest disciple, could 
never tell what Platonism was ; indeed, ad- 
mirable texts can be quoted on both sides of 
every great question from him. 

These things we are forced to say, if we 
must consider the effort of Plato, or of any phi- 
losopher, to dispose of Nature, — which will not 
be disposed of. No power of genius has ever- 
yet had the smallest success in explaining ex- 
istence. The perfect enigma remains. But 
there is an injustice in assuming this ambition 
for Plato. Let us not seem to treat with flip- 



76 1Representativ7e /llben 



pancy his venerable name. Men, in propor- 
tion to their intellect, have admitted his tran- 
scendent claims. The way to know him, is to 
compare him, not with nature, but with other 
men. How many ages have gone by, and he 
remains unapproached ! A chief structure of 
human wit, like Karnac, or the mediaeval cathe- 
drals, or the Etrurian remains, it requires all the 
breadth of human faculty to know it. I think 
it is truliest seen, when seen with the most 
respect. His sense deepens, his merits multi- 
ply, with study. When we say, here is a fine 
collection of fables ; or, when we praise the 
style ; or the common sense ; or arithmetic ; 
we speak as boys, and much of our impatient 
criticism of the dialectic, I suspect, is no 
better. The criticism is like our impatience 
of miles, when we are in a hurry ; but it is still 
best that a mile should have seventeen hun- 
dred and sixty yards. The great-eyed Plato 
proportioned the lights and shades after the 
genius of our life. 



PLATO : NEW READINGS. 



PLATO : NEW READINGS. 



The publication, in Mr. Bohn's " Serial Li- 
brary," of the excellent translations of Plato, 
which we esteem one of the chief benefits the 
cheap press has yielded, gives us an occasion 
to take hastily a few more notes of the eleva- 
tion and bearings of this fixed star ; or, to add 
a bulletin, hke the journals, of Plato at the 
latest dates. 

Modern science, by the extent of its gener- 
alization, has learned to indemnify the student 
of man for the defects of individuals, by trac- 
ing growth and ascent in races ; and, by the 
simple expedient of lighting up the vast back- 
ground, generates a feeling of complacency 
and hope. The human being has the saurian 
and the plant in his rear. His arts and 
sciences, the easy issue of his brain, look glori- 
ous when prospectively beheld from the dis- 
tant brain of ox, crocodile, and fish. It seems 
as if nature, in regarding the geologic night 
behind her, when,Jn five or six millenniums, 

79 



8o IRepresentativc hbcn 



she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, 
Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was nowise 
discontented with the result. These samples 
attested the virtue of the tree. These were a 
clear amelioration of trilobite and saurus, and 
a good basis for further proceeding. With 
this artist time and space are cheap, and she 
is insensible of what you say of tedious prep- 
aration. She waited tranquilly the flowing 
periods of paleontology, for the hour to be 
struck when man should arrive. Then periods 
must pass before the motion of the earth can 
be suspected ; then before the map of the 
instincts and the cultivable powers can be 
drawn. But as of races, so the succession 
of individual men is fatal and beautiful, and 
Plato has the fortune, in the history of man- 
kind, to mark an epoch. 

Plato's fame does not stand on a syllogism, 
or on any masterpieces of the Socratic reason- 
ing, or on any thesis, as, for example, the im- 
mortality of the soul. He is more than an ex- 
pert, or a school-man, or a geometer, or the 
prophet of a peculiar message. He repre- 
sents the privilege of the intellect, the power, 
namely, of carrying up every fact to succes- 
sive platforms, and so disclosing, in every 
fact, a germ of expansion. These expansions 
are in the essence of thought. The naturalist 
would never help us to them by any discov- 
eries of the extent of the universe, but is as 
poor, when cataloguing the i^solved nebula of 



Plato : flew IRcaMngs 8i 



Orion, as when measuring the angles of an 
acre. But the Republic of Plato, by these 
expansions, may be said to require, and so to 
anticipate, the astronomy of Laplace. The 
expansions are organic. The mind does not 
create what it perceives, any more than the eye 
creates the rose. In ascribing to Plato the 
jnerit of announcing them, we only say, here 
was a more complete man, who could apply to 
nature the whole scale of the senses, the under- 
standing, and the reason. These expansions, 
or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual 
sight where the horizon falls on our natural 
vision, and, by this second sight, discovering 
the long lines of law which shoot in every 
direction. Everywhere he stands on a path 
which has no end, but runs continuously round 
the universe. Therefore, every word becomes 
an exponent of nature. Whatever he looks 
upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior 
senses. His perception of the generation of 
contraries, of death out of life, and life out of 
death, — that law by which, in nature, decom- 
position is recomposition, and putrefaction and 
cholera are only signals of a new creation ; his 
discernment of the little in the large, and the 
large in the small ; studying the state in the 
citizen, and the citizen in the state ; and leav- 
ing it doubtful whether he exhibited the Re- 
public as an allegory on the education of the 
private soul ; his beautiful definitions of ideas, 
of time, of form, of figure, of the line, some- 
6 



82 IRepresentatlve /Hben 



times hypothetically given, as his defining of 
virtue, courage, justice, temperance ; his love 
of the apologue, and his apologues themselves ; 
the cave of Trophonius ; the ring of Gyges ; the 
charioteer and two horses ; the golden, silver, 
brass, and iron temperaments ; Theuth and 
Thamus ; and the visions of Hades and the 
Fates, — fables which have imprinted them- 
selves in the human memory like the signs of 
the zodiac ; his soliform eye and his boniform 
soul ; his doctrine of assimilation ; his doctrine 
of reminiscence ; his clear vision of the laws 
of return, or reaction, which secure instant 
justice throughout the universe, instanced 
everywhere, but specially in the doctrine, 
" what comes from God to us, returns from us 
to God," and in Socrates' belief that the laws 
below are sisters of the laws above. 

More striking examples are his moral conclu- 
sions. Plato affirms the coincidence of science 
and virtue ; for vice can never know itself and 
virtue ; but virtue knows both itself and vice. 
The eye attested that justice was best, as long 
as it was profitable ; Plato affirms that it is 
profitable throughout ; that the profit is in- 
trinsic, though the just conceal his justice from 
gods and men ; that it is better to suffer in- 
justice, than to do it ; that the sinner ought to 
covet punishment; that the lie was more hurt- 
ful than homicide ; and that ignorance, or the 
involuntary lie, was more calamitous than in- 
voluntary homicide ; that the soul is unwill- 



Iplato : IRcw IRcaOinQS S$ 



ingly deprived of true opinions ; and that no 
man sins willingly ; that the order of proceed- 
ing of nature was from the mind to the body ; 
and, though a sound body ca^nnot restore an 
unsound mind, yet a good soul can, by its vir- 
tue, render the body the best possible. The in- 
telligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, 
the right of instructing them. The right pun- 
ishment of one out of tune, is to make him play 
in tune ; the fine which the good, refusing to 
govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a 
worse man ; that his guards shall not handle 
gold and silver, but shall be instructed that 
there is gold and silver in their souls, which wiU 
make men willing to give them everything 
which they need. 

This second sight explains the stress laid on 
geometry. He saw that the globe of earth 
was not more lawful and precise than was the 
supersensible ; that a celestial geometry was in 
place there, as a logic of lines and angles here 
below ; that the world was throughout math- 
ematical ; the proportions are constant of 
oxygen, azote, and lime ; there is just so much 
water, and slate, and magnesia ; not less are 
the proportions constant of moral elements. 

This eldest Goethe, hating varnish and false- 
hood, delighted in revealing the real at the 
base of the accidental ; in discovering con- 
nection, continuity, and representation, every- 
where ; hating insulation ; and appears like the 
god of wealth among the cabins of vagabonds, 



84 IRcpreecntatlve /iRen 



opening power and capability in everything he 
touches. Ethical science was new and vacant, 
when Plato could write thus : — " Of all whose 
arguments are left to the men of the present 
time, no one has ever yet condemned injustice, 
or praised justice, otherwise than as respects 
the repute, honors, and emoluments arising 
therefrom ; while, as respects either of them in 
itself, and subsisting by its own power in the 
soul of the possessor, and concealed both from 
gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently inves- 
tigated, either in poetry or prose writings, — how, 
namely, that the one is the greatest of all the 
evils that the soul has within it, and justice 
the greatest good." 

His definition of ideas, as what is simple, 
permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever 
discriminating them from the notions of the 
understanding, marks an era in the world. He 
was born to behold the self-evolving power of 
spirit, endless generator of new ends ; a power 
which is the key at once to the centrality and 
the evanescence of things. Plato is so centred, 
that he can well spare all his dogmas. Thus 
the fact of knowledge and ideas reveals to him 
the fact of eternity ; and the doctrine of remi- 
niscence he offers as the most probable partic- 
ular explication. Call that fanciful, — it mat- 
ters not : the connection between our knowl- 
edge and the abyss of being is still real, and 
the explication must be not less magnificent. 

He has indicated every eminent point in 



Plato: naew IReaMngs 85 



speculation. He wrote on the scale of the mind 
itself, so that all things have symmetry in his 
tablet. He put in all the past, without weari- 
ness, and descended into detail with a courage 
like that he witnessed in nature. One would 
say, that his forerunners had mapped out each 
a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellect- 
ual geography, but that Plato first drew the 
sphere. He domesticates the soul in nature : 
man is the microcosm. All the circles of the 
visible heaven represent as many circles in the 
rational soul. There is no lawless particle, 
and there is nothing casual in the action of the 
human mind. The names of things, too, are 
fatal, following the nature of things. All the 
gods of the Pantheon are, by their names, sig- 
nificant of a profound sense. The gods are 
the ideas. Pan is speech, or manifestation ; 
Saturn, the contemplative ; Jove, the regal 
soul ; and Mars, passion. Venus is propor- 
tion ; Calliope, the soul of the world ; Aglaia, 
intellectual illustration. 

These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had ap- 
peared often to pious and to poetic souls ; but 
this well-bred, all-knowing Greek geometer 
comes with command, gathers them all up into 
rank and gradation, the Euclid of holiness, 
and marries the two parts of nature. Before 
all men, he saw the intellectual values of the 
moral sentiment. He describes his own 
ideal, when he paints in Timaeus a god leading 



86 ' IRepresentative /Ren 



things from disorder into order. He kindled 
a fire so truly in the centre, that we see the 
sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, 
equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and 
node : a theory so averaged, so modulated, 
that you would say, the winds of ages had 
swept through this rhythmic structure, and not 
that it was the brief extempore blotting of one 
short-lived scribe. Hence it has happened 
that a very well-marked class of souls, namely 
those who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, 
an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth 
by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet 
legitimate to it, are said to Platonize. Thus, 
Michel Angelo is a Platonist, in his sonnets. 
Shakspeare is a Platonist, when he writes, 
" Nature is made better by no mean, but nat- 
ure makes that mean," or, 

" He, that can endure 
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord, 
Does conquer him that did his master conquer, 
And earns a place in the story." 

Hamlet is a pure Platonist, and 'tis the magni- 
tude only of Shakspeare's proper genius that 
hinders him from being classed as the most 
eminent of this school. Swedenborg, through- 
out his prose poem of " Conjugal Love," is a 
Platonist. 

His subtlety commended him to men of 
thought. The secret of his popular success is 



Plato ; mew IReaMngs 87 



the moral aim, which endeared him to man- 
kind. " Intellect," he said, " is king of 
heaven and of earth ; " but, in Plato, intellect is 
always moral. His writings have also the 
sempiternal youth of poetry. For their argu- 
ments, most of them, might have been couched 
in sonnets : and poetry has never soared higher 
than in the Timaeus and the Phaedrus. As the 
poet, too, he is only contemplative. He did 
not, like Pythagoras, break himself with an in- 
stitution. All his painting in the Republic 
must be esteemed mythical, with intent to 
bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his 
thought. You cannot institute, without peril 
of charlatan. 

It was a high scheme, his absolute privilege 
for the best (which, to make emphatic, he ex- 
pressed by community of women), as the pre- 
mium which he would set on grandeur. There 
shall be exempts of two kinds : first, those 
who by demerit have put themselves below 
protection, — outlaws ; and secondly, those who 
by eminence of nature and desert are out of 
the reach of your rewards : let such be free of 
the city, and above the law. We confide them 
to themselves ; let them do with us as they 
will. Let none presume to measure the irreg- 
ularities of Michel Angelo and Socrates by 
village scales. 

In his eighth book of the Republic, he 
throws a little mathematical dust in our eyes. 
I am sorry to see him, after such noble supe- 



88 IRepreeentativc /iBen 



riorities, permitting the lie to governors. Plato 
plays Providence a little with the baser sort, 
as people allow themselves with their dogs and 
cats. 



SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 



III. 
Swedenborg ; or, The Mystic, 



Among eminent persons, those who are most 
dear to men are not the class which the econ- 
omist calls producers ; they have nothing in 
their hands; they have not cultivated corn, 
nor made bread ; they have not led out a 
colony, nor invented a loom. A higher class, 
in the estimation and love of this city-building, 
market-going race of mankind, are the poets, 
who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the 
thought and imagination with ideas and pict- 
ures which raise men out of the world of corn 
and money, and console them for the short- 
comings of the day, and the meannesses of labor 
and traffic. Then, also, the philosopher has his 
value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer, 
by engaging him with subtleties which instruct 
him in new faculties. Others may build cities ; 
he is to understand them, and keep them in 
awe. But there is a class who lead us into 
another region, — the world of morals, or of 

91 



92 IRcprcsentatfve ^en 



will. What is singular about this region of 
thought, is, its claim. Wherever the sentiment 
of right comes in, it takes precedence of every- 
thing else. For other things, I make poetry 
of them ; but the moral sentiment makes 
poetry of me. 

I have sometimes thought that he would 
render the greatest service to modern criticism, 
who shall draw the line of relation that sub- 
sists between Shakspeare and Swedenborg. 
The human mind stands ever in perplexity, 
demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, im- 
patient equally of each without the other. 
The reconciler has not yet appeared. If we 
tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of 
refuge. Yet the instincts presently teach, that 
the problem of essence must take precedence 
of all others, — the questions of Whence.? 
What? and Whither? and the solution of 
these must be in a life, and not in a book. A 
drama or poem is a proximate or oblique reply ; 
but Moses, Menu, Jesus, work directly on this 
problem. The atmosphere of moral sentiment 
is a region of grandeur which reduces all 
material magnificence to toys, yet opens to 
every wretch that has reason the doors of the 
universe. Almost with a fierce haste it lays 
its empire on the man. In the language of 
the Koran, "God said, the heaven and the 
earth, and all that is between them, think ye 
that we created them in jest, and that ye shall 
not return to us ? " It is the kingdom of the 



SwcDenborg ; or, XLbe jflB^stic. 93 



will, and by inspiring the will, which .s the 
seat of personality, seems to convert the 
universe into a person : — 

" The realms of being to no other bow, 
Not only all are thine, but all are Thou." 

All men are commanded by the saint. The 
Koran makes a distinct class of those who are 
by nature good, and whose goodness has an 
influence on others, and pronounces this class 
to be the aim of creation : the other classes 
are admitted to the feast of being, only as 
following in the train of this. And the Per- 
sian poet exclaims to a soul of this kind : 

" Go boldly forth, and feast on being's banquet ; 
Thou art the called, — the rest admitted with thee." 

The privilege of this caste is an access to the 
secrets and structure of nature, by some higher 
method than by experience. In common par- 
lance, what one man is said to learn by ex- 
perience, a man of extraordinary sagacity is 
said, without experience, to divine. The 
Arabians say, that Abul Khain, the mystic, 
and Abu Ali Seena, the Philosopher, conferred 
together ; and, on parting, the philosopher 
said, "All that he sees, I know;" and the 
mystic said, "All that he knows, I see." If 
one should ask the reason of this intuition, the 
solution would lead us into that property which 
Plato denoted as Reminiscence, and which is 
implied by the Bramins in the tenet of Trans- 



94 IReprcsentative /iBen 



migration. The soul having been often, born, 
or, as the Hindoos say, " travelling the path 
of existence through thousands of births,'^ 
having beheld the things which are here, those 
which are in heaven, and those which are 
beneath, there is nothing of which she has not 
gained the knowledge : no wonder that she is 
able to recollect, in regard to any one thing, 
what formerly she knew. " For, all things in 
nature being linked and related, and the soul 
having heretofore known all, nothing hinders 
but that any man who has recalled to mind, 
or, according to the common phrase, has 
learned one thing only, should of himself re- 
cover all his ancient knowledge, and find out 
again all the rest, if he have but courage, and 
faint not in the midst of his researches. For 
inquiry and learning is reminiscence all." 
How much more, if he that inquires be a holy 
and godlike soul ! For, by being assimilated 
to the original soul, by whom, and after whom, 
all things subsist, the soul of man does then 
easily flow into all things, and all things flow 
into it : they mix ; and he is present and sym- 
pathetic with their structure and law. 

This path is difficult, secret, and beset with 
terror. The ancients called it ecstasy or 
absence, — a getting out of their bodies to 
think. All religious history contains traces of 
the trance of saints, — a beatitude, but without 
any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad ; 
" the flight," Plotinus called it, " of the alone to 



SweDenborg ; or, ^bc /IRtlstic. 95 



the alone ; " Mi^ecrts, the closing of the eyes, — 
whence our word. Mystic, The trances of 
Socrates, Plotinus, Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, 
Fox, Pascal, Guion, Swedenborg, will readily 
come to mind. But what as readily comes to 
mind, is, the accompaniment of disease. This 
beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to 
the mind of the receiver. " It o'erinforms 
the tenement of clay,'' and drives the man 
mad ; or, gives a certain violent bias, which 
taints his judgment. In the chief examples 
of religious illumination, somewhat morbid 
has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable 
increase of mental power. Must the highest 
good drag after it a quality which neutralizes 
and discredits it t — 

" Indeed it takes 
From our achievements, when performed at height. 
The pith and marrow of our attribute." 

Shall we say, that the economical mother dis 
burses so much earth and so much fire, by 
weight and metre, to make a man, and will 
not add a pennyweight, though a nation is 
perishing for a leader ? Therefore, the men 
of God purchased their science by folly or 
pain. If you will have pure carbon, carbuncle, 
or diamond, to make the brain transparent, 
the trunk and organs shall be so much the 
grosser : instead of porcelain, they are potter's 
earth, clay, or mud. 

In modern times, no such remarkable ex- 



96 IRcprcscntatlvc Itbcn 



ample of this introverted mind has occurred, 
as in Emanuel Swedenborg, born in Stock- 
holm, in 1688. This man, who appeared to 
his contemporaries a visionary, and elixir of 
moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life of 
any man then in the world : and now, when 
the royal and ducal Frederics, Cristierns, and 
Brunswicks, of that day, have slid into 
oblivion, he begins to spread himself into the 
minds of thousands. As happens in great 
men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of 
his powers, to be a composition of several 
persons, — like the giant fruits which are 
matured in gardens by the union of four or 
five single blossoms. His frame is on a larger 
scale, and possesses the advantage of size. 
As it is easier to see the reflection of the great 
sphere in large globes, though defaced by some 
crack or blemish, than in drops of water, so 
men of large calibre, though with some eccen- 
tricity or madness, like Pascal or Newton, 
help us more than balanced mediocre minds. 
His youth and training could not fail to 
be extraordinary. Such a boy could not 
whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into 
mines and mountains, prying into chemistry 
and optics, physiology, mathematics, and as- 
tronomy, to find images fit for the measure of 
his versatile and capacious brain. He was a 
scholar from a child, and was educated at 
Upsala. At the age of twenty-eight, he was 
made Assessor of the Board of Mines, bj 



SweOenbora ; or, Zbc IK^^stic. 97 



Charles XII, In 17 16, he left home for four 
years, and, visited the universities of England, 
Holland, France, and Germany. He per- 
formed a notable feat of engineering in 17 18, 
at the siege of Fredericshall, by hauling two 
galleys, five boats, and a sloop, some fourteen 
English miles overland, for the royal service. 
In 172 1, he journeyed over Europe, to ex- 
amine mines and smelting works. He pub- 
lished, in 1 7 16, his Dsedalus Hyperboreus, 
and, from this time, for the next thirty years, 
was employed in the composition and publica- 
tion of his scientific works. With the like 
force, he threw himself into theology. In 
1743, when he was fifty-four years old, what 
is called his illumination began. All his met- 
allurgy, and transportation of ships overland, 
was absorbed into this ecstasy. He ceased to 
publish any more scientific books, withdrew 
from his practical labors, and devoted himself 
to the writing and publication of his volumi- 
nous theological works, which were printed at 
his own expense, or at that of the Duke of 
Brunswick, or other prince, at Dresden, Leipsic, 
London, or Amsterdam. Later, he resigned 
his office of Assessor : the salary attached 
to this office continued to be paid to him 
during his life. His duties had brought him 
into intimate acquaintance with King Charles 
XII., by whom he was much consulted and 
honored. The like favor was continued to 
him by his successor. At the Diet of 1751, 
7 



98 IRepresentative /IRcn 



Count Hopken says, the most solid memorials 
on finance were from his pen. In Sweden, 
he appears to have attracted a marked regard. 
His rare science and practical skill, and the 
added fame of second sight and extraordinary- 
religious knowledge and gifts, drew to him 
queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and peo- 
ple about the ports through which he was 
wont to pass in his many voyages. The 
clergy interfered a little with the importation 
and publication of his religious works ; but he 
seems to have kept the friendship of men in 
power. He was never married. He had 
great modesty and gentleness of bearing. 
His habits were simple; he lived on bread, 
milk, and vegetables ; and he lived in a house 
situated in a large garden : he went several 
times to England, where he does not seem to 
have attracted any attention whatever from the 
learned or the eminent ; and died at London, 
March 29, 1772, of apoplexy, in his eighty- 
fifth year. He is described, when in London, 
as a man of quiet, clerical habit, not averse to 
tea and coffee, and kind to children. He 
wore a sword when in full velvet dress, and, 
whenever he walked out, carried a gold-headed 
cane. There is a common portrait of him in 
antique coat and wig, but the face has a wan- 
dering o'r vacant air. 

The genius which was to penetrate the 
science of the age with a far more subtle 
science ; to pass the bounds of space and time ; 



SwcOenborcj ; or, XLbc /IR^stlc 99 



venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt 
to establisli a new religion in the world, — be- 
gan its lessons in quarries and forges, in the 
smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and 
dissecting-rooms. No one man is perhaps 
able to judge of the merits of his works on so 
many subjects. One is glad to learn that his 
books on mines and metals are held in the 
highest esteem by those who understand these 
matters. It seems that he anticipated much 
science of the nineteenth century ; anticipated, 
in astronomy, the discovery of the seventh 
planet, — but, unhappily, not also of the eighth ; 
anticipated the views of modern astronomy in 
regard to the generation of earth by the sun ; 
in magnetism, some important experiments and 
conclusions of later students ; in chemistry, 
the atomic theory ; in anatomy, the discoveries 
of Schlichting, Monro, and Wilson ; and first 
demonstrated the office of the lungs. His 
excellent English editor magnanimously lays 
no stress on his discoveries, since he was too 
great to care to be original ; and we are to 
judge, by what he can spare, of what remains. 
A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his 
times, uncomprehended by them, and requires 
a long local distance to be seen ; suggest, as 
Aristotle, Bacon, Selden, Humboldt, that a 
certain vastness of learning, or ^?iasi omnipres- 
ence of the human soul in nature, is possible. 
His superb speculation, as from a tower, over 
nature and arts, without ever losing sight of 



loo IRcpresentatlvc /IBen 



the texture and sequence of things, almost real- 
izes his own picture, in the " Principia," of the 
original integrity of man. Over and above 
the merit of his particular discoveries, is the 
capital merit of his self-equality. A drop of 
water has the properties of the sea, but can- 
not exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a 
concert, as well as of a flute ; strength of a 
host, as well as of a hero ; and, in Sweden- 
borg, those who are best acquainted with mod- 
ern books will most admire the merit of mass. 
One of the missouriums and mastodons of 
literature, he is not to be measured by whole 
colleges of ordinary scholars. His stalwart 
presence would flutter the gowns of an univer- 
sity. Our books are false by being fragment- 
ary; their sentences are bon 7nots, and not 
parts of natural discourse ; childish expres- 
sions of surprise or pleasure in nature ; or, 
worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petu- 
lance, or aversion from the order of nature, — 
being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not 
in harmony with nature, and purposely framed 
to excite surprise, as jugglers do by conceal- 
ing their means. But Swedenborg is system- 
atic, and respective of the world in every sen- 
tence ; all the means are orderly given ; his 
faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and 
this admirable writing is pure from all pert- 
ness or egotism. 

Swedenborg was born into an atmosphere 
of great ideas, 'Tis hard to say what was his 



SweC)cnborg ; or, ^be ^^sttc loi 



own : yet his life was dignified by noblest pict- 
ures of the universe. The robust Aristotelian 
method, with its breadth and adequateness, 
shaming our sterile and linear logic by its 
genial radiation, conversant with series and 
degree, with effects and ends, skilful to dis- 
criminate power from form, essence from acci- 
dent, and opening by its terminology and defi- 
nition, high roads into nature, had trained a 
race of athletic philosophers. Harvey had 
shown the circulation of the blood : Gilbert 
had shown that the earth was a magnet : Des- 
cartes, taught by Gilbert's magnet, with its 
vortex, spiral, and polarity, had filled Europe 
with the leading thought of vortical motion, as 
the secret of nature. Newton, in the year in 
which Swedenborg was born, published the 
" Principia," and established the universal 
gravity. Malpighi, following the high doc- 
trines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and Lucre- 
tius, had given emphasis to the dogma that 
nature works in leasts, — " tota in minimis 
existit natura." Unrivalled dissectors, Swam- 
merdam, Leeuwenhoek, Winslow, Eustachius, 
Heister, Vesalius, Boerhaave, had left nothing 
for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human 
or comparative anatomy : Linnasus, his con- 
temporary, was afiirming, in his beautiful 
science, that " Nature is always like herself : " 
and, lastly, the nobility of method, the largest 
application of principles, had been exhibited 
by Leibnitz and Christian Wolff, in cosmology ; 



I02 IReprescntative l^cn 



whilst Locke and Grotius had drawn the moral 
argument. What was left for a genius of the 
largest calibre, but to go over their ground, 
and verify and unite ? It is easy to see, in 
these minds, the original of Swedenborg's 
studies, and the suggestion of his problems. 
He had a capacity to entertain and vivify these 
volumes of thought. Yet the proximity of 
these geniuses, one or other of whom had in- 
troduced all his leading ideas, makes Sweden- 
borg another example of the difficulty, even in 
a highly fertile genius, of proving originality, 
the first birth and annunciation of one of the 
laws of nature. 

He named his favorite views, the doctrine 
of Forms, the doctrine of Series and Degrees, 
the doctrine of Influx, the doctrine of Corre- 
spondence. His statement of these doctrines 
deserves to be studied in his books. Not 
every man can read them, but they will reward 
him who can. His theologic works are valu- 
able to illustrate these. His writings would be 
a sufficient library to a lonely and athletic 
student ; and the " Economy of the Animal 
Kingdom " is one of those books which, by 
the sustained dignity of thinking, is an honor 
to the human race. He had studied spars 
and metals to some purpose. His varied and 
solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with 
points and shooting spicula of thought, and 
resembling one of those winter mornings when 
the air sparkles with crystals. The grandeur 



SweDenborg ; or, ^be /iRsstic 103 



of the topics makes the grandeur of the style. 
He was apt for cosmology, because of that 
native perception of identity which made mere 
size of no account to him. In the atom of 
magnetic iron, he saw the quality which 
would generate the spiral motion of sun and 
planet. 

The thoughts in \vhich he lived were, the 
universality of each law in nature ; the Pla- 
tonic doctrine of the scale or degrees ; the 
version or conversion of each into other, and 
so the correspondence of all the parts ; the 
fine secret that little explains large, and large, 
little ; the centrality of man in nature, and the 
connection that subsists throughout all things : 
he saw that the human body was strictly uni- 
versal, or an instrument through which the 
soul feeds and is fed by the whole of matter : 
so that he held, in exact antagonism to the 
skeptics, that, " the wiser a man is, the more will 
he be a worshipper of the Deity." In short, 
he was a believer in the Identity-philosophy, 
which he held not idly, as the dreamers of Berlin 
or Boston, but which he experimented with 
and stablished through years of labor, with the 
heart and strength of the rudest Viking that 
his rough Sweden ever sent to battle. 

This theory dates from the oldest philoso- 
phers, and derives perhaps its best illustration 
from the newest. It is this : that nature iter* 
ates her means perpetually on successive 
planes. In the old aphorism, nature is al- 



104 IRepresentativc USscn 



ways self-similar. In the plant, the eye or 
germinative point opens to a leaf, then to an- 
other leaf, with a power of transforming the 
leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, 
sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is 
still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the 
more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, 
determining the form it shall assume. In the 
animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of 
vertebrae, and helps herself still by a new 
spine, with a limited power of modifying its 
form, — spine on spine, to the end of the world. 
A poetic anatomist, in our own day, teaches 
that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, 
being an erect line, constitute a right angle ; 
and, between the lines of this mystical quad- 
rant, all animated beings find their place ; and 
he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or 
the snake, as the type or prediction of the 
spine. Manifestly, at the end of the spine, 
nature puts out smaller spines, as arms ; at 
the end of the arms, new spines, as hands ; at 
the other end, she repeats the process, as legs 
and feet. At the top of the column, she puts 
out another spine, which doubles or loops 
itself over, as a span-worm, into a ball, and 
forms the skull, with extremities again ; the 
hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the 
lower jaw, the fingers and toes being repre- 
sented this time by upper and lower teeth. 
This new spine is destined to high uses. It is 
a new man on the shoulders of the last. It 



Swc^enbocfl; or, ^be /Hbi^stic 105 



can almost shed its trunk, and manage to live 
alone, according to the Platonic idea in the 
Timasus. Within it, on a higher plane, all that 
was done in the trunk repeats itself. Nature 
recites her lesson once more in a higher mood. 
The mind is a finer body, and resumes its 
functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, ex- 
cluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal 
element. Here, in the brain, is all the process 
of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, 
comparing, digesting, and assimilating of ex- 
perience. Here again is the mystery of gen- 
eration repeated. In the brain are male and 
female faculties ; here is marriage, here is fruit. 
And there is no limit to this ascending scale, 
but series on series. Everything, at the end 
of one use, is taken up into the next, each 
series punctually repeating every organ and 
process of the last. We are adapted to in- 
finity. W'e are hard to please, and love noth- 
ing which ends ; and in nature is no end ; 
but everything, at the end of one use, is 
lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these 
things climbs into daemonic and celestial 
natures. Creative force, like a musical com- 
poser, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple 
air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in 
chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it 
fills earth and heaven with the chant. 

Gravitation, as explained by Newton, is 
good, but grander, when we find chemistry 
only an extension of the law of masses into 



io6 IRepresentativc jflBcn 



particles, and that the atomic theory shows the 
action of chemistry to be mechanical also. 
Metaphysics shows us a sort of gravitation, 
operative also in the mental phenomena ; and 
the terrible tabulation of the French statists 
brings every piece of whim and humor to be 
reducible also to exact numerical rations. If 
one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thou- 
sand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, 
then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty 
thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, 
or marries his grandmother. What we call 
gravitation, and fancy ultimate, is one fork of 
a mightier stream, for which we have yet no 
name. Astronomy is excellent ; but it must 
come up into life to have its full value, and 
not remain there in globes and spaces. The 
globule of blood gyrates around its own axis in 
the human veins, as the planet in the sky ; 
and the circles of intellect relate to those of 
the heavens. Each law of nature has the like 
universality ; eating, sleep or hybernation, 
rotation, generation, metamorphosis, vortical 
motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets, 
these grand rhymes or returns in nature, — the 
dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, 
under a mask so unexpected that we think it 
the face of a stranger, and, carrying up the 
semblance into divine forms, — delighted the 
prophetic eye of Swedenborg ; and he must be 
reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by 
giving to science an idea, has given to an aim- 



SwcDcnborg ; or, XLbc /iR^stic 107 



less accumulation of experiments, guidance 
and form, and a beating heart. 

I own, with some regret, that his printed 
works amount to about fifty stout octaves, his 
scientific works being about half of the whole 
number ; and it appears that a mass of manu- 
script still unedited remains in the royal 
library at Stockholm. The scientific works 
have just now been translated into English, in 
an excellent edition. 

Swedenborg printed these scientific books 
in the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and 
they remained from that time neglected : and 
now, after their century is complete, he has at 
last found a pupil in Mr. Wilkinson, in Lon- 
don, a philosophic critic, with a coequal vigor 
of understanding and imagination comparable 
only to Lord Bacon's, who has produced his 
master's buried books to the day, and trans- 
ferred them, with every advantage, from their 
forgotten Latin into English, to go round the 
world in our commercial and conquering 
tongue. This startling reappearance of 
Swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his 
pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his his- 
tory. Aided, it is said, by the munificence of 
Mr. Clissold, and also by his literary skill, this 
piece of poetic justice is done. The admirable 
preliminary discourses with which Mr. Wilkin- 
son has enriched these volumes, throw all the 
contemporary philosophy of England into 
shade, and leave me nothing to say on their 
proper grounds. 



io8 IRcprcscntatire ^cn 



The " Animal Kingdom " is a book of won- 
derful merits. It was written with the highest 
end, — to put science and the soul, long 
estranged from each other, at one again. It 
was an anatomist's account of the human body, 
in the highest style of poetry. Nothing can ex- 
ceed the bold and brilliant treatment of a sub- 
ject usually so dry and repulsive. He saw 
nature *' wreathing through an everlasting 
spiral, with wheels that never dry, on axles 
that never creak," and sometimes sought "to 
uncover those secret recess is where nature is 
sitting at the fires in the depths of her labora- 
tory ; " whilst the picture comes recommended 
by the hard fidelity with which it is based on 
practical anatomy. It is remarkable that this 
sublime genius decides, peremptorily for the 
analytic, against the synthetic method ; and, 
in a book whose genius is a daring poetic 
synthesis, claims to confine himself to a rigid 
experience. 

He knows, if he only, the flowing of nature 
and how wise was that old answer of Amasis 
to him who bade him drink up the sea, — " Yes, 
willingly, if you will stop the rivers that flow 
in." Few knew as much about nature and her 
subtle manners, or expressed more subtly her 
goings. He thought as large a demand is 
made on our faith by nature, as by miracles. 
*' He noted that in her proceeding from first 
principles through her several subordinations, 
there was no state throusrh which she did not 



SwcDenbors ; or, ^be /Bsstic 109 



pass, as if her path lay through all things.'* 
" For as often as she betakes herself upward 
from visible phenomena, or, in other words, 
withdraws herself inward, she instantly, as it 
were, disappears, while no one knows what 
has become of her, or whither she is gone : so 
that it is necessary to take science as a guide 
in pursuing her steps." 

The pursuing the inquiry under the light of 
an end or final cause, gives wonderful anima- 
tion, a sort of personality to the whole writing. 
This book announces his favorite dogmas. 
The ancient doctrine of Hippocrates, that the 
brain is a gland ; and of Leucippus, that the 
atom may be known by the mass ; or, in Plato, 
the macrocosm by the microcosm ; and, in the 
verses of Lucretius, — 

Ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis 
Ossibus sic et de pauxillis atque minutis 
Visceribus viscus gigni, sanguenque creari 
Sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibus guttis ; 
Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse 
Aurum, et de terris terram concrescere parvis ; 
Ignibus ex igneis, humorem humoribus esse. 

Lib. I. 835. 

*' The principle of all things entrails made 
Of smallest entrails ; bone, of smallest bone , 
Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one ; 
Gold, of small grains ; earth, of small sands compacted 
Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted : " 

and which Malpighi had summed in his max- 
im, that " nature exists entirely in leasts," — 
is a favorite thought of Swedenborg. " It is a 



no IRepresentative /Iften 



constant law of the organic body, that large, 
compound, or visible forms exist and subsist 
from smaller, simpler, and ultimately from in- 
visible forms, which act similarly to the larger 
ones, but more perfectly and more universally, 
and the least forms so perfectly and univer- 
sally, as to involve an idea representative of 
their entire universe." The unities of each 
organ are so many little organs, homogeneous 
with their compound : the unities of the 
tongue are little tongues ; those of the stom- 
ach, little stomachs ; those of the heart are 
little hearts. This fruitful idea furnishes a 
key to every secret. What was too small for 
the eye to detect was read by the aggregates ; 
what was too large, by the units. There is nO' 
end to his application of the thought. *' Hun- 
ger is an aggregate of very many little hun- 
gers, or losses of blood by the little veins all 
over the body." It is the key to his theology, 
also. *' Man is a kind of very minute heaven, 
corresponding to the world of spirits and to 
heaven. Every particular idea of man, and 
every affection, yea, every smallest spark of his 
affection, is an image and effigy of him. A 
spirit may be known from only a single 
thought. God is the grand man." 

The hardihood and thoroughness of his 
study of nature required a theory of forms, 
also. " Forms ascend in order from,, the low- 
est to the highest. The lowest form is an- 
gular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. The 



SweDcnborg; or, Cbe ^sstic. m 



second and next higher form is the circular, 
which is also called the perpetual-angular, be- 
cause the circumference of a circle is a perpet- 
ual angle. The form above this is the spiral, 
parent and measure of circular forms : its diam- 
eters are not rectilinear, but variously cir- 
cular, and have a spherical surface for centre ; 
therefore it is called the perpetual-circular. 
The form above this is the vortical, or per- 
petual-spiral : next, the perpetual-vortical, or 
celestial : last, the perpetual-celestial, or spir- 
itual." 

Was it strange that a genius so bold should 
take the last step, also, — conceive that he 
might attain the science of all sciences, to un- 
lock the meaning of the world? In the first 
volume of the " Animal Kingdom," he 
broaches the subject, in a remarkable note. — 

" In our doctrine of Representations and 
Correspondences, we shall treat of both these 
symbolical and typical resemblances, and of the 
astonishing things which occur, I will not say, 
in the living body only, but throughout nature, 
and which correspond so entirely to supreme 
and spiritual things, that one would swear that 
the physical world was purely symbolical of 
the spiritual world ; insomuch, that if we choose 
to express any natural truth in physical and 
definite vocal terms, and to convert these 
terms only into the corresponding and spirit- 
ual terms, we shall by this means elicit a spirit- 
ual truth, or theological dogma, in place of 



112 IRcpresentative /iBen. 



the physical truth or precept : although no 
mortal would have predicted that anything of 
the kind could possibly arise by bare literal 
transposition ; inasmuch as the one precept, 
considered separately from the other, appears 
to have absolutely no relation to it. I intend, 
hereafter, to communicate a number of exam- 
ples of such correspondences, together with a 
vocabulary containing the terms of spiritual 
things, as well as of the physical things for 
■which they are to be substituted. This sym- 
bolism pervades the living body." 

The fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied 
in all poetry, in allegory, in fable, in the use 
of emblems, and in the structure of language. 
Plato knew of it, as is evident from his twice 
bisected line, in the sixth book of the Repub- 
lic. Lord Bacon had found that truth and 
nature differed only as seal and print ; and he 
instanced some physical proportions, with 
their translation into a moral and political 
sense. Behmen, and all mystics, imply this 
law, in their dark riddle-writing. The poets, 
in as far as they are poets, use it ; but it is 
known to them only, as the magnet was known 
for ages, as a toy. Swendenborg first put 
the fact into a detached and scientific state- 
ment, because it was habitually present to him, 
and never not seen. It was involved, as we 
explained already, in the doctrine of identity 
and iteration, because the mental series ex- 
actly tallies with the material series. It re- 



SwcDenborg ; or, Zbc Mystic 1 13 



quired an insight tiiat could rank things in 
order and series ; or, rather, it required such 
Tightness of position, that the poles of the 
eye should coincide with the axis of the world. 
The earth has fed its mankind through five 
or six millenniums, and they had sciences, 
religions, philosophies ; and yet had failed to 
see the correspondence of meaning between 
every part and every other part. And, down 
to this hour, literature has no book in which 
the symbolism of things is scientifically opened. 
One would say, that, as soon as men had the 
first hint that every sensible object, — animal, 
rock, river, air, — nay, space and time, sub- 
sists not for itself, nor finally to a material 
end, but as a picture-language, to tell another 
story of beings and duties, other science would 
be put by, and a science of such grand presage 
would absorb all faculties : that each man 
would ask of all objects, what they mean : 
Why does the horizon hold me fast, with my 
joy and grief, in this centre ? Why hear I the 
same sense from countless differing voices, 
and read one never quite expressed fact in end- 
less picture-language ? Yet, whether it be, that 
these things will not be intellectually learned, 
or, that many centuries must elaborate and 
compose so rare and opulent a soul, — there is 
no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, 
spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not 
interest more scholars and classifiers, than the 
meaning and upshot of the frame of things. 
8 



114 TRcprcgentative /iRen 



But Swedenborg was not content with the 
culinary use of the world. In his fifty-fourth 
year, these thoughts held him fast, and his pro- 
found mind admitted the perilous opinion, too 
frequent in religious history, that he was an 
abnormal person, to whom was granted the 
privilege of conversing with angels and spirits ; 
and this ecstasy connected itself with just this 
office of explaining the moral import of the 
sensible world. To a right perception, at 
once broad and minute, of the order of nature, 
he added the comprehension of the moral 
laws in their widest social aspects ; but what- 
ever he saw, through some excessive determin- 
ation to form, in his constitution, he saw not 
abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, 
constructed it in events. When he attempted 
to announce the law most sanely, he was 
forced to couch it in parable. 

Modern psychology offers no similar ex- 
ample of a deranged balance. The principal 
powers continued to maintain a healthy action ; 
and, to a reader who can. make due allowance 
in the report for the reporter's peculiarities, 
the results are still instructive, and a more 
striking testimony to the sublime laws he 
announced, than any that balanced dulness 
could afford. He attempts to give some 
account of the modus of the new state, affirm 
ing that " his presence in the spiritual world 
is attended with a certain separation, but only 
as to the intellectual part of his mind, not as 



SwcOcnborg; or, Zbc /IBigstic 115 



to the will part ; " and he affirms that *' he 
sees, with the internal sight, the things that 
are in another life, more clearly than he sees 
the things which are here in the world." 

Having adopted the belief that certain 
books of the Old and New Testaments were 
exact allegories, or written in the angelic and 
ecstatic mode, he employed his remaining" 
years in extricating from the literal, the universal 
sense. He had borrowed from Plato the fine 
fable of " a most ancient people, men better 
than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods ; " 
and Swedenborg added, that they used the 
earth symbolically ; that these, when they 
saw terrestrial objects, did not think at all 
about them, but only about those which 
they signified. The correspondence between 
thoughts and things henceforward occupied 
him. "The very organic form resembles the 
end inscribed on it." A man is in general, 
and in particular, an organized justice or in- 
justice, selfishness or gratitude. And the 
cause of this harmony he assigned in the 
Arcana: "The reason why all and single 
things, in the heavens and on earth, are repre- 
sentative, is because they exist from an in- 
flux of the Lord, through heaven." This de- 
sign of exhibiting such correspondences, which, 
if adequately executed, would be the poem of 
the world, in which all history and science 
would play an essential part, was narrowed 
and defeated by the exclusively theologic 



ii6 IRcprescntattve /iRen 



direction which his inquiries took. His per- 
ception of nature is not human and universal, 
but is mystical and Hebraic. He fastens each 
natural object to a theologic notion : — a horse 
signifies carnal understanding; a tree, per- 
ception ; the moon, faith ; a cat means this ; 
an ostrich, that; an artichoke, this other; and 
poorly tethers every symbol to a several 
ecclesiastic sense. The slippery Proteus is 
not so easily caught. In nature, each indi- 
vidual symbol plays innumerable parts, as 
each particle of matter circulates in turn 
through every system. The central identity 
enables any one symbol to express succes- 
sively all the qualities and shades of the 
real being. In the transmission of the 
heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. 
Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard 
pedantry that would chain her waves. She 
is no literalist. Everything must be taken 
genially, and we must be at the top of our 
condition, to understand anything rightly. 

His theological bias thus fatally narrowed 
his interpretation of nature, and the dictionary 
of symbols is yet to be written. But the in- 
terpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will 
find no predecessor who has approached so 
near to the true problem. 

Swedenborg styles himself, in the title-page 
of his books, " Servant of the Lord Jesus 
Christ ; " and by force of intellect, and in 
effect, he is the last Father in the Church, and 



SweDenborfl ; or, ^be /iR^stic 117 



is not likely to have a successor. No wonder 
that his depth of ethical wisdom should give 
him influence as a teacher. To the withered 
traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he 
let in nature again, and the w^orshipper, 
escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is 
surprised to find himself a party to the whole 
of his religion. His religion thinks for him, 
and is of universal application. He turns it 
on every side ; it fits every part of life, in- 
terprets and dignifies every circumstance. 
Instead of a religion which visited him diplo- 
matically three or four times, — when he was 
born, when he married, when he fell sick, and 
when he died, and for the rest never interfered 
with him, — here was a teaching which accom- 
panied him all day, accompanied him even 
into sleep and dreams ; into his thinking, and 
showed him through what a long ancestry his 
thoughts descend ; into society, and showed 
by what affinities he was girt to his equals and 
his counterparts ; into natural objects, and 
showed their origin and meaning, what are 
friendly, and what are hurtful ; and opened 
the future world, by indicating the continuity 
of the same laws. His disciples allege that 
their intellect is invigorated by the study of 
his books. 

There is no such problem for criticism as 
his theological writings, their merits are so 
commanding ; yet such grave deductions must 
be made. Their immense and sandy diffuse- 



ii8 IRepresentativc /Iften 



ness is like the prairie, or the desert, and their 
incongruities are like the last deliration. He 
is superfluously explanatory, and his feeling of 
the ignorance of men, strangely exaggerated. 
Men take truths of this nature very fast. Yet 
he abounds in assertions : he is a rich dis- 
coverer, and of things which most import us 
to know. His thought dwells in essential re- 
semblances, like the resemblance of a house 
to the man who built it. He saw things in 
their law, in likeness of function, not of 
structure. There is an invariable method and 
order in his delivery of his truth, the habitual 
proceeding of the mind from inmost to out- 
most. What earnestness and weightiness, — 
his eye never roving, without one swell of 
vanity, or one look to self, in any common 
form of literary pride ! a theoretic or specu- 
lative man, but whom no practical man in the 
universe could affect to scorn. Plato is a 
gownsman : his garment, though of purple, 
and almost skywoven, is an academic robe, 
and hinders action with its voluminous folds. 
But this mystic is awful to Caesar. Lycurgus 
himself would bow. 

The moral insight of Swedenborg, the 
correction of popular errors, the announcment 
of ethical laws, take him out of comparison 
with any other modern writer, and entitle him 
to a place, vacant for some ages, among 
the lawgivers of mankind. That slow but 
commanding influence which he has acquired, 



SweDenborg; ox^Zbc /nbsstic 119 



like that of other reHgious geniuses, must be 
excessive also, and have its tides, before it 
subsides into a permanent amount. Of course, 
what is real and universal cannot be confined 
to the circle of those who sympathize strictly 
with his genius, but will pass forth into the 
common stock of wise and just thinking. The 
world has a sure chemistry, by which it attracts 
what is excellent in its children, and lets fall 
the infirmities and limitations of the grandest 
mind. 

That metempsychosis which is familiar in 
the old mythology of the Greeks, collected in 
Ovid, and in the Indian Transmigration, and 
is there objective, or really takes place in bodies 
by alien will, — in Swedenborg's mind, has a 
more philosophic character. It is subjective, 
or depends entirely upon the thought of the 
person. All things in the universe arrange 
themselves to each person anew, according to 
his ruling love. Man is such as his affection 
and thought are. Man is man by virtue of 
willing, not by virtue of knowing and under- 
standing. As he is, so he sees. The marriages 
of the world are broken up. Interiors asso- 
ciate all in the spiritual world. Whatever the 
angels looked upon was to them celestial. 
Each Satan appears to himself a man ; to those 
as bad as he, a comely man ; to the purified a 
heap of carrion. Nothing can resist states : 
everything gravitates : Uke will to like : what 
we call poetic justice takes effect on the spot. 



I20 IRcpresentative lUscn 

We have come into a world which is a Hving 
poem. Everything is as I am. Bird and 
beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and 
effluvia of the minds and wills of men there 
present. Every one makes his own house and 
state. The ghosts are tormented with the fear 
of death, and cannot remember that they have 
died. They who are in evil and falsehood are 
afraid of all others. Such as have deprived 
themselves of charity, wander and flee : the 
societies which they approach discover their 
quahty, and drive them away. The covetous 
seem to themselves to be abiding in cells 
where their money is deposited, and these to 
be infested with mice. They who place merit 
in good works seem to themselves to cut wood. 
" I asked such, if they were not wearied ? 
They replied, that they have not yet done 
work enough to merit heaven." 

He delivers golden sayings, which express 
with singular beauty the ethical laws ; as when 
he uttered that famed sentence, that, "in 
heaven the angels are advancing continually 
to the springtime of their youth, so that the 
oldest angel appears the youngest : " " The 
more angels, the more room : " " The perfection 
of man is the love of use : " " Man, in his per- 
fect form, is heaven : " " What is from Him, is 
Him : " " Ends always ascend as nature de- 
scends : " And the truly poetic account of the 
writing in the inmost heaven, which, as it con- 
sists of inflexions according to the form of 



SwcDenborg ; or, tlbe Hb^etic 



heaven, can be read without instruction. He 
almost justifies his claim to preternatural 
vision, by strange insights of the structure of 
the human body and mind. " It is never per- 
mitted to any one, in heaven, to stand behind 
another and look at the back of his head : for 
then the infiux which is from the Lord is dis- 
turbed." The angels, from the sound of the 
voice, know a man's love ; from the articulation 
of the sound, his wisdom ; and from the sense 
of the words, his science. 

In the " Conjugal Love," he has unfolded 
the science of marriage. Of this book, one 
would say, that, with the highest elements, it 
has failed of success. It came near to be the 
Hymn of Love, which Plato attempted in the 
" Banquet ; " the lov^e, which, Dante says, 
Casella sang among the angels in Paradise ; 
and which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, 
fruition, and effect, might well entrance the 
souls, as it would lay open the genesis of all 
institutions, customs, and manners. The book 
had been grand, if the Hebraism had been 
omitted, and the law stated without Gothicism, 
as ethics, and with that scope for ascension of 
state which the nature of things requires. It 
is a fine Platonic development of the science 
of marriage ; teaching that sex is universal, and 
not local ; virility in the male qualifying every 
organ, act, and thought ; and the feminine in 
woman. Therefore, in the real or spiritual 
world, the nuptial union is not momentary, 



122 TReprescntative /iRen 



but incessant and total ; and chastity not a 
local, but a universal virtue ; unchastity being 
discovered as much in the trading, or planting, 
or speaking, or philosophizing, as in generation ; 
and that, though the virgins he saw in heaven 
were beautiful, the wives were incomparably 
more beautiful, and went on increasing in 
beauty evermore. 

Yet Swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his 
theory to a temporary form. He exaggerates 
the circumstance of marriage ; and, though he 
finds false marriages on the earth, fancies a 
wiser choice in heaven. But of progressive 
souls, all loves and friendships are momentary. 
Do you love me J means, Do you see the same 
truth t If you do, we are happy with the same 
happiness ; but presently one of us passes into 
the perception of new truth ; — we are divorced, 
and no tension in nature can hold us to each 
other. I know how dehcious is this cup of 
love, — I existing for you, you existing for me ; 
but it is a child's clinging to his toy ; an attempt 
to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber ; 
to keep the picture-alphabet through which 
our first lessons are prettily conveyed. The 
Eden of God is bare and grand : like the out- 
door landscape, remembered from the even- 
ing fireside, it seems cold and desolate, whilst 
you cower over the coals ; but, once abroad 
again, we pity those who can forego the mag- 
nificence of nature, for candle-light and cards. 
Perhaps the true subject of the " Conjugal 



SwcC»cnborg; or, Zbc /Hb^stic 123 



Love " is cofiversation, whose laws are pro- 
foundly eliminated. It is false, if literally 
applied to marriage. For God is the bride or 
bridegroom of the soul. Heaven is not the 
pairing of two, but the communion of all souls. 
We meet, and dwell an instant under the temple 
of one thought, and part as though we parted 
not, to join another thought in other fellow- 
ships of joy. So far from there being any- 
thing divine in the low and proprietary sense 
of Do you love me? it is only when you leave 
and lose me, by casting yourself on a sentiment 
which is higher than both of us, that I draw 
near, and find myself at your side ; and I am 
repelled, if you fix your eye on me, and de- 
mand love. In fact, in the spiritual world, we 
change sexes every moment. You love the 
worth in me ; then I am your husband : but it 
is not me, but the worth, that fixes the love ; 
and that worth is a drop of the ocean of 
worth that is beyond me. Meantime, I adore 
the greater worth in another, and so become 
his wife. He aspires to a higher worth in 
another spirit, and is wife or receiver of that 
influence. 

Whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he 
grew into, from jealousy of the sins to which 
men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in 
disentangling and demonstrating that particu- 
lar form of moral disease, an acumen which no 
conscience can resist. I refer to his feeling of 
the profanation of thinking to what is good 



124 TRepresentative ^cn 



" from scientifics." " To reason about faith, 
is to doubt and deny. " He was painfully alive 
to the difference between knowing and doing, 
and this sensibility is incessantly expressed. 
Philosophers are, therefore, vipers, cockatrices, 
asps, hemorrhoids, presters,and flying serpents ; 
literary men are conjurers and charlatans. 

But this topic suggests a sad afterthought, 
that here we find the seat of his own pain. 
Possibly Swedenborg paid the penalty of in- 
troverted faculties. Success, or a fortunate 
genius, seems to depend on a happy adjustment 
of heart and brain ; on a due proportion, hard 
tt) hit, of moral and mental power, which, 
perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical ratios 
which make a proportion in volumes necessary 
to combination, as when gases will combine 
in certain fixed rates, but not at any rate. It is 
hard to carry a full cup : and this man, pro- 
fusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell 
into dangerous discord with himself. In his 
Animal Kingdom, he surprised us, by declar- 
ing that he loved analysis, and not synthesis ; 
and now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into 
jealousy of his intellect ; and, though aware 
that truth is not solitary, nor is goodness 
solitary, but both must ever mix and marry, 
he makes war on his mind, takes the part of 
the conscience against it, and, on all occasions, 
traduces and blasphemes it. The violence is 
instantly avenged. Beauty is disgraced, love 
is unlovely, when truth, the half part of heaven, 



SwcDenborg ; or, ^be /Ks^stic, 125 



is denied, as much as when a bitterness in 
men of talent leads to satire, and destroys the 
judgment. He is wise, but wise in his own 
despite. There is an air of infinite grief, and 
the sound of wailing, all over and through 
this lurid universe. A vampyre sits in the 
seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy 
appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a 
bird does not more readily weave its nest, or 
a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of 
the souls substructs a new hell and pit, each 
more abominable than the last, round every 
new crew of offenders. He was let down 
through a column that seemed of brass, but it 
was formed of angelic spirits, that he might 
descend safely amongst the unhappy, and 
witness the vastation of souls ; and heard 
there, for a long continuance, their lamenta- 
tions ; he saw their tormentors, who increase 
and strain pangs to infinity ; he saw the hell 
of the jugglers, the hell of the assassins, the 
hell of the lascivious ; the hell of robbers, who 
kill and boil men ; the infernal tun of the 
deceitful ; the excrementitious hells ; the hell 
of the revengeful, whose faces resembled a 
round, broad cake, and their arms rotate like 
a wheel. Except Rabelais and Dean Swift, 
nobody ever had such science of filth and 
corruption. 

These books should be used with caution. 
It is dangerous to sculpture these evanescing 
images of thought. True in transition, they 



126 IRcprcsentative ^cn 



become false if fixed. It requires, for his just 
apprehension, almost a genius equal to his 
own. But when his visions become the ste- 
reotyped language of multitudes of persons, of 
all degrees of age and capacity, they are 
perverted. The wise people of the Greek race 
were accustomed to lead the most intelligent 
and virtuous young men, as part of their 
education, through the Eleusinian mysteries, 
wherein, with much pomp and graduation, the 
highest truths known to ancient wisdom were 
taught. An ardent and contemplative young 
man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read 
once these books of Swedenborg, these mys- 
teries of love and conscience, and then throw 
them aside forever. Genius is ever haunted by 
similar dreams, when the hells and the heavens 
are opened to it. But these pictures are to be 
held as mystical, that is, as a quite arbitrary 
and accidental picture of the truth — not as 
the truth. Any other symbol would be as 
good : then this is safely seen. 

Swedenborg's system of the world wants 
central spontaneity ; it is dynamic, not vital, 
and lacks power to generate life. There is no 
individual in it. The universe is a gigantic 
crystal, all those atoms and laminae lie in un- 
interrupted order, and with unbroken unit}^, 
but cold and still. What seems an individual 
and a will, is none. There is an immense 
chain of intermediation, extending from centre 



SvveDenborg ; or, Zbc Ifes^eUc 127 



to extremes, which bereaves every agency of 
all freedom and character. The universe, in 
his poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and 
only reflects the mind of the magnetizer. 
Every thought comes into each mind by in- 
fluence from a society of spirits that surround 
it, and into these from a higher society, and so 
on. All his types mean the same few things. 
All his figures speak one speech. All his 
interlocutors Swedenborgize. Be they who 
they may, to this complexion must they come 
at last. This Charon ferries them all over in 
his boat ; kings, counsellors, cavaliers, doctors, 
Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, King 
George II., Mahomet, or whosoever, and all 
gather one grimness of hue and style. Only 
when Cicero comes by, our gentle seer sticks 
a little at saying he talked with Cicero, and, 
with a touch of human relenting, remarks, 
" one whom it was given me to believe was 
Cicero ; " and when the soi disant Roman 
opens his mouth, Rome and eloquence have 
ebbed away, — it is plain theologic Sweden- 
borg, like the rest. His heavens and hells 
are dull ; fault of want of individualism. The 
thousand-fold relation of men is not there. 
The interest that attaches in nature to each 
man, because he is right by his wrong, and 
wrong by his right, because he defies all 
dogmatizing and classification, so many allow- 
ances, and contingences, and futurities, are to 
be taken into account, strong by his vices, 



128 IRepresentatlpe /Iben 



often paralyzed by his virtues, — sinks into 
entire sympathy with his society. This want 
reacts to the centre of the system. Though 
the agency of " the Lord " is in every line 
referred to by name, it never becomes alive. 
There is no lustre in that eye which gazes 
from the centre, and which should vivify the 
immense dependency of beings. 

The vice of Swedenborg's mind is its theo- 
logic determination. Nothing with him has 
the liberaUty of universal wisdom, but we are 
always in a church. That Hebrew muse, 
which taught the lore of right and wrong to 
men, had the same excess of influence for 
him, it has had for the nations. The mode, 
as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine 
is ever the more valuable as a chapter in 
universal history, and ever the less an avail- 
able element in education. The genius of 
Swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in 
this department of thought, wasted itself in 
the endeavor to reanimate and conserve what 
had already arrived at its natural term, and, in 
the great secular Providence, was retiring 
from its prominence, before western modes of 
thought and expression. Swedenborg and 
Behmen both failed by attaching themselves 
to the Christian symbol, instead of to the 
moral sentiment, which carries innumerable 
Christianities, humanities, divinities, in its 
bosom. 

The excess of influence shows itself in the 



Swe^cnborg ; or, Zbc /IR^stic 129 



incongruous importation of a foreign rhetoric. 
*' What have I to do," asks the impatient 
reader, " with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and 
chalcedony; what with arks and passovers, 
ephahs and ephods ; what with lepers and 
emerods ; what with heave-offerings and un- 
leavened bread ; chariots of fire, dragons 
crowned and horned, behemoth and unicorn ? 
Good for orientals, these are nothing to me. 
The more learning you bring to explain them, 
the more glaring the impertinence. The more 
coherent and elaborate the system, the less I 
like it. I say, with the Spartan, ' Why do you 
speak so much to the purpose, of that which 
is nothing to the purpose ,'' ' My learning is 
such as God gave me in my birth and habit, 
in the delight and study of my eyes, and not 
of another man's. Of all absurdities, this of 
some foreigner, proposing to take away my 
rhetoric, and substitute his own, and amuse 
me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush and 
robin ; palm-trees and shittim-wood, instead 
*of sassafras and hickory, — seems the most 
needless." 

Locke said, " God, when he makes the 
prophet, does not unmake the man." Sweden- 
borg's history points the remark. The parish 
disputes, in the Swedish church, between the 
friends and foes of Luther and Melancthon, 
concerning " faith alone," and " works alone," 
intrude themselves into his speculations upon 
the economy of the universe, and of the celes- 
■ 9 



130 IReprcsentatlve /iRen 



tial societies. The Lutheran bishop's son, for 
whom the heavens are opened, so that he sees 
with eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, 
the awful truth of things, and utters ■ again, in 
his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the 
indisputable secrets of moral nature, — with all 
these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the 
Lutheran bishop's son ; his judgments are 
those of a Swedish polemic, and his vast en- 
largements purchased by adamantine limita- 
tions. Lie carries his controversial memory 
with him, in his visits to the souls. He is like 
Michel Angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the 
cardinal who had offended him to roast under 
a mountain of devils; or, like Dante, who 
avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his private 
wrongs ; or, perhaps still more like Mon- 
taigne's parish priest, who, if a hailstorm passes 
over the village, thinks the day of doom has 
come, and the cannibals already have got the 
pip. Swedenborg confounds us not less with 
the pains of Melancthon, and Luther, and 
Woltius, and his own books, which he adver- 
tises among the angels. 

Under the same theologic cramp, many of 
his dogmas are bound. His cardinal position 
in morals is, that evils should be shunned as 
sins. But he does not know what evil is, or 
what good is, who thinks any ground remains 
to be occupied, after saying that evil is to be 
shunned as evil. I doubt not he was led by 
the desire to insert the element of personality 



SvveDenborg ; or, Zbc /Ubi^stic 131 



of Deity. But nothing is added. One man, 
you say, dreads erysipelas, — show him that 
this dread is evil : or, one dreads hell, — show 
him that drea^/ is evil. He who loves good- 
ness, harbors angels, reveres reverence, and 
lives with God. The less we have to do with 
our sins, the better. No man can afford to 
waste his moments in compunctions. " That 
is active duty," say the Hindoos, " which is 
not for our bondage ; that is knowledge, which 
is for our liberation ; all other duty is good 
only unto weariness." 

Another dogma, growing out of this perni- 
cious theologic limitation, is this Inferno. 
Swedenborg has devils. Evil, according to 
old philosophers, is good in the making. That 
pure malignity can exist, is the extreme prop- 
osition of unbelief. It is not to be enter- 
tained by a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it is 
the last profanation. Euripides rightly said, — 

" Goodness and being in the gods are one ; 
He who imputes ill to them makes them none." 

To what a painful perversion had Gothic 
theology arrived, that Swedenborg admitted 
no conversion for evil spirits ! But the divine 
effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in the sun 
will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and 
man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gib- 
bets, is on his way to all that is good and true. 
Burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe 
to " poor old Nickie Ben," 



132 IReprescntatlve /iBen 



" O wad ye tak a thought, and mend ! " 

has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. 
Everything is superficial, and perishes, but 
love and truth only. The largest is always the 
truest sentiment, and we feel the more gener- 
ous spirit of the Indian Vishnu, — " I am the 
same to all mankind. There is not one who 
is worthy of my love or hatred. They who 
serve me with adoration, — I am in them, and 
they in me. If one whose ways are altogether 
evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as 
the just man ; he is altogether well employed ; 
he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and 
obtaineth eternal happiness." 

For the anomalous pretension of Revelations 
of the other world, — only his probity and 
genius can entitle it to any serious regard. 
His revelations destroy their credit by run- 
ning into detail. If a man say, that the Holy 
Ghost has informed him that the Last Judg- 
ment (or the last of the judgments) took place 
in 1757; or, that the Dutch, in the other 
world, live in a heaven by themselves, and 
the English, in a heaven by themselves ; I re- 
ply, that the Spirit which is holy, is reserved, 
taciturn, and deals in laws. The rumors of 
ghosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. 
The teaching of the high Spirit are abstemious, 
and, in regard to particulars, negative. Soc- 
rates' Genius did not advise him to act or to 
find, but if he proposed to do somewhat not 



Swe^enborg ; or, ^be ms^stic 133 



advantageous, it dissuaded him. " What God 
is," he said, " I know not ; what he is not I 
know." The Hindoos have denominated the 
Supreme Being, the " Internal Check." The 
illuminated Quakers explained their Light, 
not as somewhat which leads to any action, 
but it appears as an obstruction to anything 
unfit. But the right examples are private ex- 
periences, which are absolutely at one on this 
point. Strictly speaking, Swedenborg's reve- 
lation is a confounding of planes, — a capital 
offence in so learned a categorist. This is to 
carry the law of surface into the plane of sub- 
stance, to carry individualism and its fopperies 
into the realm of essences and generals, which 
is dislocation and chaos. 

The secret of heaven is kept from age to 
age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever 
dropt an early syllable to answer the long- 
ings of saints, the fears of mortals. We 
should have listened on our knees to any 
favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had 
brought his thoughts into parallelism with the 
celestial currents, and could hint to human 
ears the scenery and circumstance of the 
newly parted soul. But it is certain that it 
must tally with what is best in nature. It 
must not be inferior in tone to the already 
known works of the artist who sculptures the 
globes of the firmament, and writes the moral 
law. It must be fresher than rainbows, stabler 
than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with 



134 TRcprcsentative /iRen 



tides, and the rising and setting of autumnal 
stars. Melodious poets shall be hoarse as 
street ballads, when once the penetrating key- 
note of nature and spirit is sounded, — the 
earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat which makes 
the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule 
of blood, and the sap of trees. 

In this mood, we hear the rumor that the 
seer has arrived, and his tale is told. But 
there is no beauty, no heaven : for angels, 
goblins. The sad muse loves night and death, 
and the pit. His Inferno is mesmeric. His 
spiritual world bears the same relation to the 
generosities and joys of truth, of which human 
souls have already made us cognizant, as a 
man's bad dreams bear to his ideal life. It is 
indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid 
pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which 
nightly turns many an honest gentleman, 
benevolent, but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulk- 
ing like a dog about the outer yards and ken- 
nels of creation. When he mounts into the 
heavens, I do not hear its language. A man 
should not tell me that he has walked among 
the angels ; his proof is, that his eloquence 
makes me one. Shall the archangels be less 
majestic and sweet than the figures that have 
actually walked the earth ? These angels that 
Swedenborg paints give us no very high idea 
of their discipline and culture ; they are all 
country parsons ; their heaven is 2. fete cham- 
^etre, and evangelical picnic, or French dis- 



SvvcDenborG; or, ^be flbi^stic 135 



tribution of prizes to virtuous peasants. 
Strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, 
bloodless man, who denotes classes of souls as 
a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits dole- 
ful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende ! 
He has no sympathy. He goes up and down 
the world of men, a modern Rhadamanthus 
in gold-headed cane and peruke, and with 
nonchalance, and the air of a referee, distrib- 
utes souls. The warm, many-weathered, pas- 
sionate-peopled world is to him a grammai 
of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason's 
procession. How different is Jacob Behmeni 
he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe- 
struck, with the gentlest humanity, to th^ 
Teacher whose lessons he conveys ; and wher/ 
he asserts that, "in some sort, love is gifc^^i:e> 
than God," his heart beats so high th^»t th«» 
thumping against his leathern coat is ?.udibV. 
across the centuries. 'Tis a great tljfterence. 
Behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, not- 
withstanding the mystical narrowness and in- 
communicableness. Swedenboi"j( is disagree- 
ably wise, and, with all his accumulated gifts, 
paralyzes and repels. 

It is the best sign of a great nature, that it 
opens a foreground, and, like the breath of 
morning landscapes, invites us onward. Swe- 
denborg is retrospective, nor can we divest 
him of his mattock and shroud. Some minds 
are forever restrained from descending into 
nature ; others are forever prevented from 



136 IRepreeentative ^en 



ascending out of it. With a force of many men, 
he could never break the umbilical cord which 
held him to nature, and he did not rise to the 
platform of pure genius. 

It is remarkable that this man, who, by his 
perception of symbols, saw the poetic construc- 
tion of things, and the primary relation of 
mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of 
the whole apparatus of poetic expression, 
which that perception creates. He knew the 
grammar and rudiments of the Mother-Tongue, 
— how could he not read off one strain into 
music ? Was he like Saadi, who, in his vision, 
designed to fill his lap with the celestial 
flowers, as presents for his friends ; but the 
fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that 
the skirt dropped from his hands ? or, is re- 
porting a breach of the manners of that 
heavenly society ? or, was it that he saw the 
vision intellectually, and hence that chiding of 
the intellectual that pervades his books I Be 
it as it may, his books have no melody, no 
emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic 
level. In his profuse and accurate imagery is 
no pleasure, for there is no beauty. We wander 
forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird 
ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. 
The entire want of poetry in so transcendent 
a mind betokens the disease, and, like a hoarse 
voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warn- 
ing. I think, sometimes, he will not be read 
longer. His great name will turn a sentence. 



SweDcnborg ; or, ^be It^etic 137 



His books have become a monument. His 
laurel so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel- 
breath so mingles with the temple incense, 
that boys and maids will shun the spot. 

Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame 
at the shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime 
beyond praise. He lived to purpose : he gave 
a verdict. He elected goodness as the clue 
to which the soul must cling in all this laby- 
rinth of nature. Many opinions conflict as to 
the true centre. In the shipwreck, some cling 
to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, 
some to spars, some to mast ; the pilot chooses 
with scien<:e, — I plant myself here ; all will 
sink before this ; " he comes to land who sails 
with me." Do not rely on heavenly favor, or 
on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on 
common sense, the old usage and main chance 
of men ; nothing can keep you, — not fate, nor 
health, nor admirable intellect ; none can keep 
you, but rectitude only, rectitude forever and 
ever ! — and, with a tenacity that never swerved 
in all his studies, inventions, dreams, he ad- 
heres to this brave choice. I think of him 
as of some transmigrating votary of Indian 
legend, who says, " Though I be dog, or jackal, 
or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, 
under what integument or ferocity, I cleave to 
right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man 
and to God." 

Swedenborg has rendered a double service 
to mankind, which is now only beginning to be 



138 IRepcesentatlxJe /Hben 



known. By the science of experiment and 
use, he made his first steps ; he observed and 
published the laws of nature ; and, ascending 
by just degrees, from events to their summits 
and causes, he was fired with piety at the har- 
monies he felt, and abandoned himself to his 
joy and worship. This was his first service. 
If the glory was too bright for his eyes to 
bear, if he staggered under the trance of de- 
light, the more excellent is the spectacle he 
saw, the realities of being which beam and 
blaze through him, and which no infirmities 
of the prophet are suffered to obscure ; and 
he renders a second passive service to men, 
not less than the first, — perhaps, in the great 
circle of being, and in the retributions of 
spiritual nature, not less glorious or less 
beautiful to himself. 



MONTAIGNE ; OR, THE SKEPTIC. 



IV. 
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SKEPTIC. 



Every fact is related on one side to sensa- 
tion, and, on the other, to morals. The game 
of thought is, on the appearance of one of 
these two sides, to find the other ; given the 
upper, to find the under side. Nothing so thin, 
but has these two faces ; and, when the ob- 
server has seen the obverse, he turns it over to 
see the reverse. 

Life is a pitching of this penny, — heads or 
tails. We never tire of this game, because 
there is still a slight shudder of astonishment 
at the exhibition of the other face, at the con- 
trast of the two faces. A man is flushed with 
success, and bethinks himself what this good 
luck signifies. He drives his bargain in the 
street ; but it occurs, that he also is bought and 
sold. He sees the beauty of a human face, and 
searches the cause of that beauty, which must be 
more beautiful. He builds his fortunes, main- 
tains the laws, cherishes his children ; but he 

141 



142 IRcpresentative ftcn 



asks himself, why ? and whereto ? This head 
and this tail are called, in the language of phi- 
losophy, Infinite and Finite ; Relative and 
Absolute ; Apparent and Real ; and many fine 
names beside. 

Each man is born with a predisposition to 
one or the other of these sides of nature ; and 
it will easily happen that men will be found 
devoted to one or the other. One class has 
the perception of difference, and is conversant 
with facts and surfaces ; cities and persons ; 
and the bringing certain things to pass ; — the 
men of talent and action. Another class have 
the perception of identity, and are men of 
faith and philosophy, men of genius. 

Each of these riders drives too fast. Plo- 
tinus believes only in philosophers ; Fenelon, 
in saints ; Pindar and Byron, in poets. Read 
the haughty language in which Plato and the 
Platonists speak of all men who are not de- 
voted to their own shining abstractions : other 
men are rats and jnice. The literary dass is 
usually proud and exclusive. The correspond- 
ence of Pope and Swift describes mankind 
around them as monsters ; and that of Goethe 
and Schiller, in our own time, is scarcely 
more kind. 

It is easy to see how this arrogance comes. 
The genius is a genius by the first look he casts 
on any object. Is his eye creative ? Does he 
not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the 
design, — he will presently undervalue the 



/Rontalanc; or, Z\yc Sceptic 143 



actual object. In powerful moments, his 
thought has dissolved the works of art and 
nature into their causes, so that the works 
appear heavy and faulty. He has a conception, 
of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. 
Picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, 
existed first in an artist's mind, without flaw, 
mistake, or friction, which impair the executed 
models. So did the church, the state, college, 
court, social circle, and all the institutions. It 
is not strange that these men, remembering 
what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should 
affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. 
Having at some time seen that the happy soul 
will carry all the arts in power, they say. Why 
cumber ourselves with superfluous realiza- 
tions ? and, like dreaming beggars, they as- 
sume to speak and act as if these values were 
already substantiated. 

On the other part, the men of toil and trade 
and luxury, — the animal world, including the 
animal in the philosopher and poet also, — and 
the practical world, including the painful drudg- 
eries which are never excused to philosopher 
or poet any more than to the rest, — weigh 
heavily on the other side. The trade in our 
streets believes in no metaphysical causes, 
thinks nothing of the force which necessitated 
traders and a trading planet to exist : no, but 
sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt. The 
ward meetings, on election days, are not soft- 
ened by any misgiving of the value of these 



144 IRepresentative /Ren 



ballotings. Hot life is streaming in a single 
direction. To the men of this world, to the 
animal strength and spirits, to the men of 
practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man 
of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone 
have reason. 

Things always bring their own philosophy 
with them, that is, prudence. No man acquires 
property without acquiring with it a little arith- 
metic, also. In England, the richest country 
that ever existed, property stands for more, 
compared with personal ability, than in any 
other. After dinner, a man believes less, denies 
more : verities have lost some charm. After 
dinner, arithmetic is the only science : ideas 
are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young 
iiien, repudiated by the solid portion of society ; 
and a man comes to be valued by his athletic 
and animal qualities. Spence relates, that Mr. 
Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller, one day, 
when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. 
" Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you have the 
honor of seeing the two greatest men in the 
world." " I don't know how great men you 
may be," said the Guinea man, " but I don't 
like your looks. I have often bought a man 
much better than both of you, all muscles and 
bones, for ten guineas." Thus, the men of the 
senses revenge themselves on the professors, 
and repay scorn for scorn. The first had 
leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say 
more than is true ; the others make themselves 



/Rontaigne; or, XLbc Sfteptic 145 



merry ^vith the philosopher, and weigh man by 
the pound. — They beUeve that mustard bites 
the tongue, that pepper is hot, friction-matches 
are incendiary, revolvers to be avoided, and 
suspenders hold up pantaloons ; that there is 
much sentiment in a chest of tea ; and a man 
will be eloquent, if you give him good wine. 
Are you tender and scrupulous, — you must eat 
more mince-pie. They hold that Luther had 
milk in him when he said, 

*' Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang 
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang ; " 

and when he advised a young scholar perplexed 
with fore-ordination and free-will, to get well 
drunk. " The nerves," says Cabanis, " they 
are the man." My neighbor, a jolly farmer, 
in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of 
money is sure and speedy spending. " For his 
part," he says, " he puts his down his neck, 
and gets the good of it." 

The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, 
that it runs into indifferentism, and then into 
disgust. Life is eating us up. We shall be 
fables presently. Keep cool : it will be all one 
a hundred years hence. Life's well enough ; 
but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they 
will all be glad to have us. Why should we 
fret and drudge ? Our meat will taste to- 
morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last 
have had enough of it. " Ah," said my languid 

ID 



146 IRepreecntative mscn 



gentleman at Oxford, " there's nothing new or 
true, — and no matter." 

With a little more bitterness, the cynic 
moans : our life is like an ass led to market by 
a bundle of hay being carried before him : 
he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. " There 
is so much trouble in coming into the world," 
said Lord Bolingbroke, " and so much more, 
as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis 
hardly worth while to be here at all." I knew 
a philosopher of this kidney, who was accus- 
tomed briefly to sum up his experience of 
human nature in saying, " Mankind is a 
damned rascal : " and the natural corollary is 
pretty sure to follow, — " The world lives by 
humbug, and so will I." 

The abstractionist and the materialist thus 
mutually exasperating each other, and the 
scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, 
there arises a third party to occupy the middle 
ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. 
He finds both wrong by being in extremes. 
He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of 
the balance. He will not go beyond his card. 
He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the 
street ; he will not be a Gibeonite ; he stands 
for the intellectual faculties, a cool head, and 
whatever serves to keep it cool : no unadvised 
industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss 
of the brains in toil. Am I an o>x, or a dray ? 
— You are both in extremes, he says. You 
that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, 



/iRontalgne ; or, Zbc Skeptic 147 



deceive yourselves grossly. You believe your- 
selves rooted and grounded on adamant ; and 
yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowl- 
edge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, 
you know not whither or whence, and you are 
bottomed and capped and wrapped in delu- 
sions. 

Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and 
wrapped in a gown. The studious class are 
their own victims : they are thin and pale, 
their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the 
night is without sleep, the day a fear of inter- 
ruption, — pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. 
If you come near them, and see what conceits 
they entertain, — they are abstractionists, and 
spend their days and nights in dreaming some 
dreams ; in expecting the homage of society 
to some precious scheme built on a truth, but 
destitute of proportion in its presentment, of 
justness in its application, and of all energy 
of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it. 

But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. 
I know that human strength is not in extremes, 
but in avoiding extremes. I, at least, will shun 
the weakness of philosophizing beyond my 
depth. What is the use of pretending to 
powers we have not ? What is the use of pre- 
tending to assurances w^e have not, respecting 
the other life ? Why exaggerate the power of 
virtue ? Why be an angel before your time ? 
These strings, wound up too high, will snap. 
If there is a wish for immortality, and no evi- 



148 IRcpresentatlve /Ren 



dence, why not say just that ? If there are 
conflicting evidences, why not state them ? If 
there is not ground for a candid thinker to 
make up his mind, yea or nay, — why not sus- 
pend the judgment ? I weary of these dog- 
matizers. I tire of these hacks of routine, who 
deny the dogmas. I neither affirm nor deny. 
I stand here to try the case. I am here to 
consider, (TKewTeLv, to consider how it is. I will 
try to keep the balance true. Of what use to 
take the chair, and glibly ratde off theories of 
societies, religion, and nature, when I know 
that practical objections lie in the way, insur- 
mountable by me and by my "mates .? Why so 
talkative in public, when each of my neighbors 
can pin me to my seat by arguments I cannot 
refute .^ Why pretend that life is so simple a 
game, when we know how subtle and elusive 
the Proteus is ? Why think to shut up all 
things in your narrow coop, when we know 
there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, 
a thousand things, and unlike ? Why fancy 
that you have all the truth in your keeping "i 
There is much to say on all sides. 

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing 
that there is no practical question on which 
anything more than an approximate solution 
can be had .<* Is not marriage an open ques- 
tion, when it is alleged, from the beginning of 
the world, that such as are in the institution 
wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get 
in ? And the reply of Socrates, to him who 



ItontMQwc; or, Zbc Sftcptlc 149 



asked whether he should choose a wife, still 
remains reasonable, " that, whether he should 
choose one or not, he would repent it." Is 
not the state a question ? All society is 
divided in opinion on the subject of the state. 
Nobody loves it ; great numbers dislike it, and 
suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance : 
and the only defence set up, is, the fear of do- 
ing worse in disorganizing. Is it otherwise 
with the church ? Or, to put any of the ques- 
tions which touch mankind nparest, — shall the 
young man aim at a leading part in law, in 
politics, in trade .'* It will not be pretended 
that a success in either of these kinds is quite 
coincident with what is best and inmost in his 
mind. Shall he, then, cutting the stays that 
hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea 
with no guidance but his genius ? There is 
much to say on both sides. Remember the 
open question between the present order of 
" competition," and the friends of " attractive 
and associated labor." The generous minds 
embrace the proposition of labor shared by all ; 
it is the only honesty ; nothing else is safe. 
It is from the poor man's hut alone, that 
strength and virtue come : and yet, on the 
other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the 
form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the 
laborers cry unanimously, " We have no 
thoughts." Culture, how indispensable ! I 
cannot forgive you the want of accomplish- 
ment ; and yet, culture will instantly destroy 



150 IRepresentattve ^en 



that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. Ex- 
cellent is culture for a savage ; but once let 
him read in the book, and he is no longer able 
not to think of Plutarch's heroes. In short, 
since true fortitude of understanding consists 
" in not letting what we know be embarrassed 
by what we do not know," we ought to secure 
those advantages which we can command, and 
not risk them by clutching after the airy and 
unattainable. Come, no chimeras ! Let us 
go abroad ; let us mix in affairs ; let us learn, 
and get, and have, and climb. " Men are a 
sort of moving plants, and, like trees, receive 
a great part of their nourishment from the air. 
If they keep too much at home, they pine." 
Let us have a robust, manly life ; let us know 
what we know, for certain ; what we have, let 
it be solid, and seasonable, and our own. A 
world in the hand is worth two in the bush. 
Let us have to do with real men and women, 
and not with skipping ghosts. 

This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic, 
— this of consideration, of self-containing ; not 
at all of unbelief ; not at all of universal deny- 
ing, nor of universal doubting, — doubting even 
that he doubts ; least of all, of scoffing and 
profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. 
These are no more his moods than are those 
of religion and philosophy. He is the con- 
siderer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting 
stock, husbanding his means, believing that a 
man has too many enemies, than that he can 



fl^ontaigne; or, ^be Sfteptfc 151 



afford to be his own ; that we cannot give our- 
selves too many advantages, in this unequal 
conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable 
ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, 
vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up 
and down into every danger, on the other. It 
is a position taken up for better defence, as of 
more safety, and one that can be maintained ; 
and it is one of more opportunity and range : 
as, when we build a house, the rule is, to set 
it not too high nor too low, under the wind, 
but out of the dirt. 

The philosophy we want is one of fluxions 
and mobility. The Spartan and Stoic schemes 
are too stark and stiff for our occasion. A 
theory of Saint John, and of non-resistance, 
seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. 
We want some coat woven of elastic steel, 
stout as the first, and limber as the second. 
We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. 
An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to 
chips and splinters, in this storm of many 
elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the 
form of man, to live at all ; as a shell is the 
architecture of a house founded on the sea. 
The soul of man must be the type of our 
scheme, just as the body of man is the type 
after which a dwelling-house is built. Adap- 
tiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. 
We are golden averages, volitant stabilities, 
compensated or periodic errors, houses founded 
on the sea. The wise skeptic wishes to have 



152 IReprcsentative /Hben 



a near view of the best game, and the chief 
players ; what is best in the planet ; art and 
nature, places and events, but mainly men. 
Everything that is excellent in mankind, — a 
form of grace, an arm of iron, lips of persua- 
sion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to 
play and win, — he will see and judge. 

The terms of admission to this spectacle 
are, that he have a certain solid and intelligi- 
ble way of living of his own ; some method of 
answering the inevitable needs of human life ; 
proof that he has played with skill and success ; 
that he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and 
the range of qualities which, among his con- 
temporaries and countrymen, entitle him to 
fellowship and trust. For, the secrets of life 
are not shown except to sympathy and like- 
ness. Men do not confide themselves to boys, 
or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers. 
Some wise limitation, as the modern phrase is ; 
some condition between the extremes, and 
having itself a positive quality ; some stark 
and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, 
but sufficiently related to the world to do 
justice to Paris or London, and, at the same 
time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom 
cities cannot overawe, but who uses them, — 
is the fit person to occupy this ground of 
speculation. 

These qualities meet in the character of 
Montaigne. And yet, since the personal re- 
gard which I entertain for Montaigne may be 



/Rontalane ; or, ^be sceptic 153 



unduly great, I will, under the shield of this 
prince of egotists, offer, as an apology for 
electing him as the representative of skepti- 
cism, a word or two to explain how my love 
began and grew for this admirable gossip. 

A single odd volume of Cotton's translation 
of the Essays remained to me from my father's 
library, when a boy. It lay long neglected, 
until, after many years, when I was newly 
escaped from college, I read the book, and 
procured the remaining volumes. I remember 
the delight and wonder in which I lived with 
it. It seemed to me as if I had myself written 
the book, in some former life, so sincerely it 
spoke to my thought and experience. It hap- 
pened, when in Paris, in 1833, that, in the cem- 
etery of Pere le Chaise, I came to a tomb of Au- 
gustus CoUignon, who died in 1830, aged sixty- 
eight years, and who, said the monument, " lived 
to do right, and had formed himself to virtue on 
the Essays of Montaigne." Some years later, 
I became acquainted with an accomplished 
English poet, John Sterling ; and, in prosecut- 
ing my correspondence, I found that, from a 
love of Montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage 
to his chateau, still standing near Castellan, 
in Perigord, and, after two hundred and fifty 
years, had copied from the walls of his library 
the inscriptions which Montaigne had written 
there. That Journal of Mr. Sterling's, pub- 
lished in the Westminster Review, Mr. Hazlitt 
has reprinted in the FrolegomcJtcB to his edition 



154 IRepresentative /iRen 



of the Essays. I heard with pleasure that one 
of the newly-discovered autographs of William 
Shakspeare was in a copy of Florio's transla- 
tion of Montaigne. It is the only book which 
we ■ certainly know to have been in the poet's 
library. And, oddly enough, the duplicate 
copy of Florio, which the British Museum 
purchased, with a view of protecting the 
Shakspeare autograph (as I was informed in 
the Museum), turned out to have the autograph 
of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt 
relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne was the 
only great writer of past times whom he read 
with avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, 
not needful to be mentioned here, concurred 
to make this old Gascon still new and immortal 
for me. 

In 15 7 1, on the death of his father, Mon- 
taigne, then thirty-eight years old, retired from 
the practice of law, at Bordeaux, and settled 
himself on his estate. Though he had been a 
man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his 
studious habits now grew on him, and he loved 
the compass, staidness, and independence of 
the country gentleman's life. He took up his 
economy in good earnest, and made his farms 
yield the most. Downright and plain-dealing, 
and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he 
was esteemed in the country for his sense and 
probity. In the civil wars of the League, 
which converted every house into a fort, Mon- 
taigne kept his gates open, and his house with- 



ItsontMQWc ; or, tTbe Sftcptfc 155 



out defence. All parties freely came and went, 
his courage and honor being universally es- 
teemed. The neighboring lords and gentry 
brought jewels and papers to him for safe-keep- 
ing. Gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, 
but two men of liberality in France, — Henry 
IV. and Montaigne. 

Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of 
all writers. His French freedom runs into 
grossness ; but he has anticipated all censures 
by the bounty of his own confessions. In his 
times, books were written to one sex only, and 
almost all were written in Latin ; so that, in a 
humorist, a certain nakedness of statement 
was permitted, which our manners, of a litera- 
ture addressed equally to both sexes, do not 
allow. But, though a biblical plainness, coupled 
with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his 
pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence 
is superficial. He parades it : he makes the 
most of it ; nobody can think or say worse of 
him than he does. He pretends to most of 
the vices ; and, if there be any virtue in him, 
he says, it got in by stealth. There is no man, 
in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging 
five or six times ; and he pretends no exception 
in his own behalf. " Five or six as ridiculous 
stories," too, he says, " can be told of me, as 
of any man living." But, with all this really 
superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invin- 
cible probity grows into every reader's mind. 

"When I the most strictly and religiously 



156 IRepreeentative /iBen 



confess myself, I find that the best virtue I 
have has in it some tincture of vice ; and I am 
afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who 
am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of 
that stamp as any other whatever), if he had 
listened, and laid his ear close to himself, 
would have heard some jarring sound of 
human mixture ; but faint and remote, and 
only to be perceived by himself." 

Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at 
color or pretence of any kind. He has been 
in courts so long as to have conceived a furi- 
ous disgust at appearances ; he will indulge 
himself with a little cursing and swearing ; he 
will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and 
street ballads : he has stayed in-doors till he is 
deadly sick : he will to the open air, though it 
rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentle- 
men of the long robe, until he wishes for can- 
nibals ; and is so nervous, by factitious life, 
that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the 
better he is. He likes his saddle. You may 
read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics 
elsewhere. Whatever you get here, shall 
smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or 
smart, or stinging. He makes no hesitation to 
entertain you with the records of his disease ; 
and his journey to Italy is quite full of that 
matter. He took and kept this position of 
equilibrium. Over his name, he drew an em- 
blematic pair of scales, and wrote Que scais 
Je? under it. As I look at his effigy opposite 



Montaigne; or, ^be Sfteptfc 157 



the title-page, I seem to hear him say, " You 
may play old Poz, if you will ; you may rail 
and exaggerate, — I stand here for truth, and 
"will not, for all the states, and churches, 
and revenues, and personal reputations of 
Europe, overstate the dry fact, as I see it ; 
I will rather mumble and prose about what 
I certainly know, — my house and barns ; my 
father, my wife, and my tenants ; my old lean 
bald pate ; my knives and forks ; what meats 
I eat, and what drinks I prefer ; and a hun- 
dred straws just as ridiculous, — than I will 
write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance. 
I like gray days, and autumn and winter 
weather. I am gray and autumnal myself, 
and think an undress, and old shoes that do 
not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not 
constrain me, and plain topics where I do not 
need to strain myself and pump my brains, 
the most suitable. Our condition as men is 
risky and ticklish enough. One cannot be 
sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but 
he may be whisked off into some pitiable or 
ridiculous plight. Why should I vapor and 
play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the 
best I can, this dancing balloon ? So, at least, 
I live within compass, keep myself ready for 
action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with 
decency. If there be anything farcical in 
such a life, the blame is not mine : let it lie at 
fate's and nature's door." 

The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining 



158 IRcpvcsentatix^e /iRen 



soliloquy on every random topic that comes 
into his head ; treating everything without 
ceremony, yet with masculine sense. There 
have been men with deeper insight ; but, one 
would say, never a man with such abundance 
of thoughts : he is never dull, never insincere, 
and has the genius to make the reader care 
for all that he cares for. 

The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches 
to his sentences. I know not anywhere the 
book that seems less written. It is the lan- 
guage of conversation transferred to a book. 
Cut these words, and they would bleed : they 
are vascular and alive. One has the same 
pleasure in it that we have in listening to the 
necessary speech of men about their work, 
when any unusual circumstance gives moment- 
ary importance to the dialogue. For black- 
smiths and teamsters do not trip in their 
speech ; it is a shower of bullets. It is Cam- 
bridge men who correct themselves, and begin 
again at every half sentence, and, moreover, 
will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from 
the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks 
with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, 
and himself, and uses the positive degree : 
never shrieks, or protests, or prays : no weak- 
ness, no convulsion, no superlative ; does not 
wish to jump out of his skin, or play any 
antics, or annihilate space or time ; but is 
stout and solid ; tastes every moment of the 
day ; likes pain, because it makes him feel 



Montaigne; or, Zhc Sfteptic 159 



himself, and realize things ; as we pinch our- 
selves to know that we are awake. He keeps 
the plain ; he rarely mounts or sinks ; likes to 
feel solid ground, and the stones underneath. 
His writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration ; 
contented, self-respecting, and keeping the 
middle of the road. There is but one excep- 
tion, — in his love for Socrates. In speaking 
of him, for once his cheek flushes, and his 
style rises to passion. 

Montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of 
sixty, in 1592. When he came to die, he 
caused the mass to be celebrated in his cham- 
ber. At the age of thirty-three, he had been 
married. " But," he says, " might I have had 
my own will, I would not have married Wisdom 
herself, if she would have had me : but 'tis to 
much purpose to evade it, the common custom 
and use of life will have it so. Most of my 
actions are guided by example, not choice." 
In the hour of death he gave the same weight 
to custom. Que scais je'i What do I know. 

This book of Montaigne the world has en- 
dorsed, by translating it into all tongues, and 
printing seventy-five editions of it in Europe : 
and that, too, a circulation somewhat chosen, 
namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men 
of the world, and men of wit and generosity. 

Shall we say that Montaigne has spoken 
wisely, and given the right and permanent 
expression of the human mind, on the conduct 
of life .? 



[6o IRcpresentative /iRen 



We are natural believers. Truth, or the 
connection between cause and effect, alone 
interests us. We are persuaded that a thread 
runs through all things : all worlds are strung 
on it, as beads : and men, and events, and 
life, come to us, only because of that thread : 
they pass and repass, only that we may know 
the direction and continuity of that line. A 
book or statement which goes to show that 
there is no line, but random and chaos, a 
calamity out of nothing, a prosperity and no 
account of it, a hero born from a fool, a fool 
from a hero, — dispirits us. Seen or unseen, 
we believe the tie exists. Talent makes 
counterfeit ties ; genius finds the real ones. 
We hearken to the man of science, because 
we anticipate the sequence in natural phe- 
nomena which he uncovers. We love whatever 
affirms, connects, preserves ; and dislike what 
scatters or pulls down. One man appears 
whose nature is to all men's eyes conserving 
and constructive : his presence supposes a 
well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large 
institutions, and empire. If these did not 
exist, they would begin to exist through his 
endeavors. Therefore, he cheers and comforts 
men, who feel all this in him very readily. 
The nonconformist and the rebel say all man- 
ner of unanswerable things against the exist- 
ing republic, but discover to our sense no plan 
of house or state of their own. Therefore, 
though the town, and state, and way of living, 



jflRontaicjnc ; or, ^be Sceptic i6i 



which our counsellor contemplated, mignt be 
a very modest or musty prosperity, yet men 
rightly go for him, and reject the reformer, so 
long as he comes only with axe and crowbar. 

But though w^e are natural conservers and 
causationists, and reject a sour, dumpish unbe- 
lief, the skeptical class, which Montaigne repre- 
sents, have reason, and every man, at some 
time, belongs to it. Every superior mind will 
pass through this domain of equilibration, — I 
should rather say, will know how to avail him- 
self of the checks and balances in nature, as a 
natural weapon against the exaggeration and 
formalism of bigots and blockheads. 

Skepticism is the attitude assumed by the 
student in relation to the particulars which 
society adores, but which he sees to be rever- 
ent only in their tendency and spirit. The 
ground occupied by the skeptic is the vesti- 
bule of the temple. Society does not like to 
have any breath of question blown on the ex- 
isting order. But the interrogation of custom 
at all points is an inevitable stage in tlie growth 
of every superior mind, and is the evidence of 
its perception of the flowing power which re- 
mains itself in all changes. 

The superior mind will find itself equally at 
odds with the evils of society, and with the 
projects that are offered to relieve them. 
The wise skeptic is a bad citizen ; no conserv- 
ative ; he sees the selfishness of property, and 
the drowsiness of institutions. But neither is 



1 62 IRepresentatire Ifbcn 



he fit to work with any democratic party that 
ever was constituted : for parties wish every 
one committed, and he penetrates the popular 
patriotism. His poUtics are those of the 
*' Soul's Errand " of Sir Walter Raleigh ; or of 
Krishna, in the Bhagavat, " There is none who 
is worthy of my love or hatred ; " while he 
sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and 
custom. He is a reformer : yet he is no better 
member of the philanthropic association. It 
turns out that he is not the champion of the 
operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. 
It stands in his mind, that our life in this world 
is not of quite so easy interpretation as 
churches and school-books say. He does not 
wish to take ground against these benevo- 
lences, to play the part of devil's attorney, and 
blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the 
sun for him. But he says. There are doubts. 

I mean to use the occasion, and celebrate 
the calendar-day of our Saint Michel de Mon- 
taigne, by counting and describing these 
doubts or negations. I wish to ferret them 
out of their holes, and sun them a little. We 
must do with them as the police do with old 
rogues, who are shown up to the public at the 
marshal's office. They will never be so for- 
midable, when once they have been identified 
and registered. But I mean honestly by them 
— that justice shall be done to their terrors. I 
shall not take Sunday objections, made up on 
purpose to be put down. I shall take the 



Montaigne ; or, ^be Sfteptfc 163 



worst I can find, whether I can dispose of 
them, or they of me. 

I do not press the skepticism of the materi- 
aUst, I know the quadruped opinion will not 
prevail. 'Tis of no importance what bats and 
oxen think. The first dangerous symptom I 
report, is, the levity of intellect ; as if it were 
fatal to earnestness to know much. Knowl- 
edge is the knowing that we cannot know. 
The dull pray ; the geniuses are light mockers. 
How respectable is earnestness on every plat- 
form ! but intellect kills it. Nay, San Carlo, 
my subtle and admirable friend, one of the 
most penetrating of men, finds that all direct 
ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to this 
ghastly insight, and sends back the votary or- 
phaned. My astonishing San Carlo thought 
the lawgivers and saints infected. They found 
the ark empty ; saw, and would not tell ; and 
tried to choke off their approaching followers, 
by saying, " Action, action, my dear fellows, 
is for you ! " Bad as was to me this detection 
by San Carlo, this frost in July, this blow from 
a brick, there was still a worse, namely, the 
cloy or satiety of the saints. In the mount of 
vision, ere they have yet risen from their 
knees, they say, " We discover that this our 
homage and beatitude is partial and deformed ; 
we must fly for relief to the suspected and 
reviled Intellect, to the Understanding, the 
Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of talent." 

This is hobgoblin the first ; and, though it 



1 64 IReprcsentatlve /Bien 



has been the subject of much elegy, in our 
nineteenth century, from Byron, Goethe, and 
other poets of less fame, not to mention many 
distinguished private observers, — I confess it 
is not very affecting to my imagination ; for it 
seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses 
and crockery-shops. What flutters the church 
of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, or of 
Boston, may yet be very far from touching 
any principle of faith. I think that the in- 
tellect and moral sentiment are unanimous ; 
and that, though philosophy extirpates bug- 
bears, yet it supplies the natural checks of 
vice, and polarity to the soul. I think that 
the wiser a man is, the more stupendous he 
finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts 
himself to a more absolute reliance. 

There is the power of moods, each setting 
at nought all but its own tissue of facts and 
beliefs. There is the power of complexions, 
obviously modifying the dispositions and senti- 
ments. The beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be 
structural ; and, as soon as each man attains 
the poise and vivacity which allow the whole 
machinery to play, he will not need extreme 
examples, but will rapidly alternate all opin- 
ions in his own life. Our life is March 
weather, savage and serene in one hour. We 
go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the 
iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on our 
heel to save our life : but a book, or a bust, or 
only the sound of a name, shoots a spark 



flbontaigne; or, XLbc Sfteptfc 165 



through the nerves, and we suddenly believe 
in will : my finger-ring shall be the seal of 
Solomon : fate is for imbeciles : all is possible 
to the resolved mind. Presently, a new experi- 
ence gives a new turn to our thoughts : common 
sense resumes its tyranny : we say, " Well, the 
arm)^ after all, is the gate to fame, manners, and 
poetry : and, look you, — on the whole, selfish- 
ness plants best, prunes best, makes the best 
commerce, and the best citizen." Are the 
opinions of a man on right and wrong, on fate 
and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or 
an indigestion ? Is his belief in God and Duty 
no deeper than a stomach evidence ? And what 
guaranty for the permanence of his opinions ? 
I like not the French celerity, — a new church 
and state once a week. — This is the second 
negation ; and I shall let it pass for what it 
will. As far as it asserts rotation of states of 
mind, I suppose it suggests its own remedy, 
namely, in the record of larger periods. What 
is the mean of many states ; of all the states ? 
Poes the general voice of ages affirm any prin- 
ciple, or is no community of sentiment discover- 
able in distant times and places .? And when it 
shows the power of self-interest, I accept that 
as a part of the divine law, and must recon- 
cile it with aspiration the best I can. 

The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the 
sense of mankind, in all ages, — that the laws 
of the world do not always befriend, but often 
hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of 



1 66 1Reprcsentativ?e /Bben 



Kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. 
We paint Time with a scythe ; Love and 
Fortune, blind ; and Destiny, deaf. We have 
too little power of resistance against this feroc- 
ity which champs us up. What front can we 
make against these unavoidable, victorious, 
maleficent forces t What can I do against 
the influence of Race, in my history ? What 
can I do against hereditary and constitutional 
habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence ? 
against climate, against barbarism, in my 
country ? I can reason down or deny every- 
thing, except this perpetual Belly : feed he must 
and will, and I cannot make him respectable. 

But the main resistance which the affirmative 
impulse finds, and one including all others, is 
in the doctrine of the Illusionists. There is a 
painful rumor in circulation, that we have been 
practised upon in all the principal perform- 
ances of life, and free agency is the emptiest 
name. We have been sopped and drugged 
with the air, with food, with woman, with chil- 
dren, with sciences, with events which leaves us 
exactly where they found us. The mathematics, 
'tis complained, leave the mind where they find 
it : so do all sciences ; and so do all events and 
actions. I find a man who has passed through 
all the sciences, the churl he was ; and, through 
all the offtces, learned, civil, and social, can 
detect the child. We are not the less neces- 
sitated to dedicate life to them. In fact, we 



Montaigne ; or, XLbc Sftcptic 167 



may come to accept it as the fixed rule and 
theory of our state of education, that God is 
a substance, and his method is illusion. The 
eastern sages owned the goddess Yoganidra. 
the great illusory energy of Vishnu, by whom, 
as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled, 
Or, shall I state it thus ? — The astonishment 
of life, is, the absence of any appearance of 
reconciliation between the theory and practice 
of Hfe. Reason, the prized reality, the Law, 
is apprehended, now and then, for a serene 
and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of 
cares and works which have no direct bearing 
on it ; — is then lost, for months or years, and 
again fotind, for an interval, to be lost again. 
If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, 
have half a dozen reasonable hours. But what 
are these cares and works the better? A 
method in the world we do not see, but this 
parallelism of great and little, which never react 
on each other, nor discover the smallest ten- 
dency to converge. Experiences, fortunes, 
governings, readings, writings are nothing to the 
purpose ; as when a man comes into the room, 
it does not appear whether he has been fed on 
yams or buffalo, — he has contrived to get so 
much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or 
out of snow. So vast is the disproportion 
between the sky of law and the pismire of per- 
formance under it, that, whether he is a man 
of worth or a sot, is not so great a matter as 
we say. Shall I add, as one juggle of this en- 



1 68 'Keptcsentatlve jfflbcn 



chantment, the stunning non-intercourse law 
which makes cooperation impossible ? The 
young spirit pants to enter society. But all the 
ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary 
imprisonment. He has been often baulked. 
He did not expect a sympathy with his thought 
from the village, but he went with it to the 
chosen and intelligent, and found no enter- 
tainment for it, but mere misapprehension, dis- 
taste, and scoffing. Men are strangely mistimed 
and misapplied ; and the excellence of each 
is an inflamed individualism which separates 
him more. 

There are these, and more than these dis- 
eases of thought, which our ordinary teachers 
do not attempt to remove. Now shall we, 
because a good nature inclines us to virtue's 
side, say. There are no doubts, — and lie for 
the right ? Is life to be led in a brave or in a 
cowardly manner ? and is not the satisfaction 
of the doubts essential to all manliness ? Is 
the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which 
is virtue ? Can you not believe that a man of 
earnest and burly habit may find small good in 
tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher 
instruction, want men, labor, trade, farming, 
war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, and 
terror, to make things plain to him ; and has he 
not a right to insist on being convinced in his 
own way ? When he is convinced, he will be 
worth the pains. 

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations 



/IRontai^ne; or, ^bc Sceptic 169 



of the soul ; unbelief in denying them. Some 
minds are incapable of skepticism. The doubts 
they profess to entertain are rather a civility 
or accommodation to the common discourse of 
their company. They may well give them- 
selves leave to speculate, for they are secure of 
a return. Once admitted to the heaven of 
thought,they see no relapse into night, but infi- 
nite invitation on the other side. Heaven is 
within heaven, and sky over sky, and they are 
encompassed with divinities. Others there are, 
to whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down 
to the surface of the earth. It is a question of 
temperament, or of more or less immersion in 
nature. The last class must needs have a 
reflex or parasite faith ; not a sight of realities, 
but an instinctive reliance on the seers and be- 
lievers of realities. The manners and thoughts 
of believers astonish them, and convince 
them that these have seen something which is 
hid from themselves. But their sensual habit 
would fix the believer to his last position, whilst 
he as inevitably advances: and presently the 
unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the be- 
liever. 

Great believers are always reckoned infi- 
dels, impracticable, fantastic, atheistic, and 
really men of no account. The spiritualist 
finds himself driven to express his faith by a 
series of skepticisms. Charitable souls come 
with their projects, and ask his cooperation. 
How can he hesitate? It is the rule of mere 



lyo IRepresentativc l^cn 



comity and courtesy to agree where you can, 
and to turn your sentence with something 
auspicious, and not freezing and sinister. 
But he is forced to say, " O, these things will 
be as they must be : what can you do ? These 
particular griefs and crimes are the foliage 
and fruit of such trees as we see growing. It 
is vain to complain of the leaf or the berry : 
cut it ofi ; it will bear another just as bad. 
You must begin your cure lower down." The 
generosities of the day prove an intractable 
element for him. The people's questions are 
not his ; their methods are not his ; and, 
against all the dictates of good nature, he is 
driven to say, he has no pleasure in them. 

Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, 
of the divine Providence, and of the immor- 
tality of the soul, his neighbors cannot put the 
statement so that he shall affirm it. But he 
denies out of more faith, and not less. He 
denies out of honesty. He had rather stand 
charged with the imbecility of skepticism, 
than with untruth. I beUeve, he says, in the 
moral design of the universe ; it exists hos- 
pitably for the weal of the souls; but your 
dogmas seem to me caricatures ; why should 
I make believe them ? Will any say, this is 
cold and infidel.? The wise and magnani- 
mous will not say so. They will exult in his 
far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the 
adversary all the ground of tradition and 
common belief, without losing a jot of strength. 



Montaigne; or, Zbc Sftcptic 171 



It sees to the end of all transgression. 
George Fox saw " that there was an ocean of 
darkness and death ; but withal, an infinite 
ocean of light and love which flowed over that 
of darkness," 

The final solution in which skepticism is 
lost is in the moral sentiment, which never 
forfeits its supremacy. All moods may be 
safely tried, and their weight allowed to all 
objections : the moral sentiment as easily out- 
weighs them all, as any one. This is the drop 
which balances the sea. I play with the mis- 
cellany of facts, and take those superficial 
views which we call skepticism ; but I know 
that they will presently appear to me in that 
order which makes skepticism impossible. A 
man of thought must feel the thought that is 
parent of the universe ; that the masses of 
nature do undulate and flow. 

This faith avails to the whole emergency of 
life and objects. The world is saturated with 
deity and with law. He is content with just 
and unjust, with sots and fools, with the 
triumph of folly and fraud. He can behold 
with serenity the yawning gulf between the 
ambition of man and his power of perform- 
ance, between the demand and supply of 
power, which makes the tragedy of all souls. 

Charles Fourier announced that " the at- 
tractions of man are proportioned to his 
destinies ; " in other words, that every desire 
predicts its own satisfaction. Yet, all ex- 



172 IReprescntattve Nsen 



perience exhibits the reverse of this ; the in- 
competency of power is the universal grief of 
young and ardent minds. They accuse the 
divine Providence of a certain parsimony. It 
has shown the heaven and earth to every child, 
and filled him with a desire for the whole ; a 
desire raging, infinite ; a hunger, as of space 
to be filled with planets ; a cry of famine, as 
of devils for souls. Then for the satisfaction, 
— to each man is administered a single drop, 
a bead of dew of vital power per day^ — a cup 
as large as space, and one drop of the water 
of life in it. Each man woke in the morning, 
with an appetite that could eat the solar 
system like a cake ; a spirit for action and 
passion without bounds ; he could lay his 
hand on the morning star ; he could try con- 
clusions with gravitation or chemistry ; but, 
on the first motion to prove his strength — 
hands, feet, senses, gave way, and would not 
serve him. He was an emperor deserted by 
his states, and left to whistle by himself, or 
thrust into a mob of emperors, all whistling : 
and still the sirens sang, " The attractions are 
proportioned to the destinies." In every 
house, in the heart of each maiden, r.nd of 
each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this 
chasm is found, — between the largest promise 
of ideal power, and the shabby experience. 
The expansive nature of truth comes to our 
succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man 
helps himself by larger generalizations. The 



/IBontaigne; or, XLbc Sftcptic 173 



lesson of life is practically to generalize ; to 
believe what the years and the centuries say 
against the hours ; to resist the usurpation of 
particulars ; to penetrate to their catholic 
sense. Things seem to say one thing, and 
say the reverse. The appearance is immoral ; 
the result is moral. Things seem to tend 
downward, to justify despondency, to promote 
rogues, to defeat the just ; and, by knaves, 
as by martyrs, the just cause is carried for- 
ward. Although knaves win in every polit- 
ical struggle, although society seems to be 
delivered over from the hands of one set of 
criminals into the hands of another set of 
criminals, as fast as the government is changed, 
and the march of civilization is a train of fel- 
onies, yet, general ends are somehow an- 
swered. We see, now, events forced on, which 
seem to retard or retrograde the civility of 
ages. But the world-spirit is a good swim- 
mer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. 
He snaps his finger at laws : and so, through- 
out history, heaven seems to affect low and 
poor means. Through the years and the cent- 
uries, through evil agents, through toys and 
atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irre- 
sistibly streams. 

Let a man learn to look for the permanent 
in the mutable and fleeting ; let him learn to 
bear the disappearance of things he was wont 
to reverence, without losing his reverence ; 
let him learn that he is here, not to work, but 



174 IRcpresentativc /Rben 



to be worked upon ; and that, though abyss 
open under abyss, and opinion displace 
opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal 
cause. — 

" If my bark sink, 'tis to another sea." 



SHAKSPEARE ; OR, THE POET. 



V. 

shakspeare; or, the poet. 



Great men are more distinguished by range 
and extent, than by originality. If we require 
the originality which consists in weaving, like 
a spider, their web from their own bowels ; in 
finding clay, and making bricks, and building 
the house ; no great men are original. Nor 
does valuable originality consist in unlikeness 
to other men. The hero is in the press of 
knights, and the thick of events ; and, seeing 
what men want, and sharing their desire, he 
adds the needful length of sight and of arm, 
to come at the desired point. The greatest 
genius is the most indebted man. A poet is 
no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, 
and, because he says everything, saying, at 
last, something good ; but a heart in unison 
with his time and country. There is nothing 
whimsical and fantastic in his production, but 
sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the 
weightiest convictions, and pointed with the 

12 177 



ryS IRcpresentattve /Rben 



most determined aim which any man or class 
knows of in his times. 

The Genius of our life is jealous of individ- 
uals, and will not have any individual great, 
except through the general. There is no 
choice to genius. A great man does not wake 
up on some fine morning, and say, " I am full 
of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic 
continent : to-day I will square the circle : I 
will ransack botany, and find a new food for 
man : I have a new architecture in my mind : 
I foresee a new mechanic power ; " no, but he 
finds himself in the river of the thoughts and 
events, forced onward by the ideas and neces- 
sities of his contemporaries. He stands where 
all the eyes of men look one way, and their 
hands all point in the direction in which he 
should go. The church has reared him amidst 
rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice 
which her music gave him, and builds a cathe- 
dral needed by her chants and processions. 
He finds a war raging : it educates him by 
trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruc- 
tion. He finds two counties groping to bring 
coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of produc- 
tion to the place of consumption, and he hits 
on a railroad. Every master has found his ma- 
terials collected, and his power lay in his 
sympathy with his people, and in his love of 
the materials he wrought in. What an 
economy of power ! and what a compensation 
for the shortness of life ! All is done to his 



Sbaftspeare ; or, Zbc poet 179 



hand. The world has brought him thus far 
on his way. The human race has gone out 
before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, 
and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, 
artisans, women, all have worked for him, and 
he enters into their labors. Choose any other 
thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the 
national feeling and history, and he would 
have all to do for himself : his powers would 
be expended in the first preparations. Great 
genial power, one would almost say, consists 
in not being original at all ; in being altogether 
receptive ; in letting the world do all, and suf- 
fering the spirit of the hour to pass unob- 
structed through the mind. 

Shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the 
English people were importunate for dramatic 
entertainments. The court took offence easily 
at political allusions, and attempted to sup- 
press them. The Puritans, a growing and 
energetic party, and the religious among the 
Anglican church, would suppress them. But 
the people wanted them. Inn-yards, houses 
without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures 
at country fairs, were the ready theatres of 
strolling players. The people had tasted this 
new joy ; and, as we could not hope to sup- 
press newspapers now, — no, not by the strong- 
est party, — neither then could king, prelate, 
or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, 
which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, 
lecture, punch, and library, at the same time. 



i8o IRepresentatlve ^en 



Probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found 
their own account in it. It had become, by 
all causes, a national interest, — by no means 
conspicuous, so that some great scholar would 
have thought of treating it in an English his- 
tory, — but not a whit less considerable, be- 
cause it was cheap, and of no account, like a 
baker's-shop. The best proof of its vitality is 
the crowd of writers which suddenly broke 
into this field ; Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, 
Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Mid- 
dleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont, 
and Fletcher. 

The secure possession, by the stage, of the 
public mind, is of the first importance to the 
poet who works for it. He loses no time in 
idle experiments. Here is audience and ex- 
pectation prepared. In the case of Shak- 
speare there is much more. At the time when 
he left Stratford, and went up to London, a 
great body of stage-plays, of all dates and 
writers, existed in manuscript, and were in 
turn produced on the boards. Here is the 
Tale of Troy, which the audience will bear 
hearing some part of every week ; the Death 
of Julius Caesar, and other stories out of Plu- 
tarch, which they never tire of ; a shelf full of 
English history, from the chronicles of Brut 
and Arthur, down to the royal Henries, which 
men hear eagerly ; and a string of doleful 
tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish 
voyages, which all the London 'prentices know. 



Sbaftspcarc; or, ZTbe ipoet i8i 



All the mass has been treated, with more or 
less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter 
has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is 
now no longer possible to say who wrote them 
first. They have been the property of the 
Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses 
have enlarged or altered them, inserting a 
speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song, 
that no man can any longer claim copyright 
on this work of numbers. Happily, no man 
wishes to. They are not yet desired in that 
way. We have few readers, many spectators 
and hearers. They had best he where they 
are. 

Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, 
esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, 
in which any experiment could be freely tried. 
Had the presfi^e which hedges about a modern 
tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. 
The rude warm blood of the living England 
circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and 
gave body which he wanted to his airy and 
majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in 
popular tradition on which he may work, and 
which, again, may restrain his art within the due 
temperance. It holds him to the people, sup- 
plies a foundation for his edifice ; and, in 
furnishing so much work done to his hand, 
leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for 
the audacities of his imagination. In short, 
the poet owes to his legend what sculpture 
owed to the temple. Sculpture in Egypt, and 



i82 TReprcsentative IStscn 



in Greece, grew up in subordination to archi- 
tecture. It was the ornament of the temple 
wall : at first, a rude relief carved on pediments, 
then the relief became bolder, and a head or 
arm was projected from the wall, the groups 
being still arrayed with reference to the build- 
ing, which serves also as a frame to hold the 
figures ; and when, at last, the greatest freedom 
of style and treatment was reached, the pre- 
vailing genius of architecture still enforced a 
certain calmness and continence in the statue. 
As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and 
with no reference to the temple or palace, the 
art began to decline : freak, extravagance, and 
exhibition, took the place of the old temper- 
ance. This balance-wheel, which the sculptor 
found in architecture, the perilous irritability 
of poetic talent found in the accumulated 
dramatic materials to which the people were 
already wonted, and which had a certain excel- 
lence which no single genius, however extraor- 
dinary, could hope to create. 

In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare 
did owe debts in all directions, and was able 
to use whatever he found ; and the amount of 
indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's 
laborious computations in regard to the First, 
Second, and Third parts of Henry VI., in 
which, •' out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written 
by some author preceding Shakspeare ; 
2373 by him, on the foundation laid by his 
predecessors ; and 1899 were entirely his own." 



Sbaftspcare; or, Zbc poet 183 



And the preceding investigation hardly leaves 
a single drama of his absolute invention. 
Malone's sentence is an important piece of 
external history. In Henry VIII., I think I 
see plainly the cropping out of the original 
rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. 
The first play was written by a superior, 
thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can 
mark his lines, and know well their cadence. 
See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene 
with Cromwell, where, — instead of the metre 
of Shakspeare, whose secret is, that the 
thought constructs the tune, so that reading 
for the sense will best bring out the rhythm, — 
here the lines are constructed on a given tune, 
and the verse has even a trace of pulpit elo- 
quence. But the play contains, through all 
its length, unmistakable traits of Shakspeare's 
hand, and some passages, as the account of 
the coronation, are like autographs. What is 
odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in 
the bid rhythm. 

Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a 
better fable than any invention can. If he 
lost any credit of design, he augmented his 
resources ; and, at that day our petulant de- 
mand for originality was not so much pressed. 
There was no literature for the million. The 
universal reading, the cheap press, were 
unknown. A great poet, who appears in illit- 
erate times, absorbs into his sphere all the 
light which is anywhere radiating. Every 



i84 IRepvescntative /Bbcn 



intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, 
it is his fine office to bring to his people ; and 
he comes to value his memory equally with 
his invention. He is therefore little solicitous 
whence his thoughts have been derived ; 
whether through translation, whether through 
tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, 
whether by inspiration ; from whatever source, 
they are equally welcome to his uncritical 
audience. Nay, he borrows very near home. 
Other men say wise things as well as he ; only 
they say a good many foolish things, and do 
not know when they have spoken wisely. He 
knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts 
it in high place, wherever he finds it. Such 
is the happy position of Homer, perhaps ; of 
Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit was 
their wit. And they are librarians and his- 
toriographers, as well as poets. Each ro- 
mancer was heir and dispenser of all the hun- 
dred tales of the world, — 

" Presenting Thebes' and Pelops' line 
And the tale of Troy divine." 

The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in 
all our early hterature ; and, more recently, 
not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden 
to him, but, in the whole society of English 
writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily 
traced. One is charmed with the opulence 
which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer 



Sba?i5peare; or, ^be ipoet 185 



is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew 
continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, 
from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance 
of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation 
from Dares Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius; 
Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Proven9al 
poets, are his benefactors : the Romaunt of 
the Rose is only judicious translation from 
William of Lorris and John of Meun : Troilus 
and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino : The 
Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie : 
The House of Fame, from the French or 
Italian : and poor Gower he uses as if he were 
only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry out of which 
to build his house. He steals by this apology, 
— that what he takes has no worth where he 
finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. 
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in 
literature, that a man, having once shown him- 
self capable of original writing, is entitled 
thenceforth to steal from the writings of others 
at discretion. Thought is the property of him 
who can entertain it ; and of him who can 
adequately place it. A certain awkwardness 
marks the use of borrowed thoughts ; but, as 
soon as we have learned what to do with them, ■ 
they become our own. 

Thus, all originality is relative. Every 
thinker is retrospective. The learned member 
of the legislature, at Westminster, or at 
Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. 
Show us the constituency, and the now invisi- 



1 86 IRepresentative /Hben 



ble channels by which the senator is made aware 
of their wishes, the crowd of practical and 
knowing men, who, by correspondence or con- 
versation, are feeding him with evidence, 
anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave 
his fine attitude and resistance of something 
of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel 
and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke and Rousseau 
think for thousands ; and so there were fount- 
ains all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or 
Milton, from which they drew; friends, lovers, 
books, traditions, proverbs, — all perished, — 
which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. 
Did the bard speak with authority ? Did he 
feel himself overmatched by any companion ? 
The appeal is to the consciousness of the 
writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi 
whereof to ask concerning any thought or 
thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? 
and to have answer, and to rely on that? 
All the debts which such a man could contract 
to other wit, would never disturb his conscious- 
ness of originality : for the ministrations of 
books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke 
to that most private reality with which he has 
conversed. 

It is easy to see that what is best written or 
done by genius, in the world, was no man's 
work, but came by wide social labor, when a 
thousand wrought like one, sharing the same 
impulse. Our^ English Bible is a wonderful 
specimen of the strength and music of the 



Sbaftspcarc ; or, ^bc poet 187 



English language. But it was not made by 
one man, or at one time ; but centuries and 
churches brought it to perfection. There never 
was a time when there was not some translation 
existing. The Liturgy, admired for its energy 
and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of 
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers 
and forms of the Catholic church, — these col- 
lected, too, in long periods, from the prayers 
and meditations of every saint and sacred 
writer, all over the world. Grotius makes the 
like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that 
the single clauses of which it is composed were 
already in use, in the time of Christ, in the 
rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of 
gold. The nervous language of the Common 
Law, the impressive forms of our courts, and 
the precision and substantial truth of the legal 
distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp- 
sighted, stron":-minded men who have lived in 
the countries where these laws govern. The 
translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by 
being translation on translation. There never 
was a time when there was none. All the truly 
diomatic and national phrases are kept, and 
all others successively picked out, and thrown 
away. Something like the same process had 
gone on. long before, with the originals of 
these books. The world takes liberties with 
world-books. Vedas, ^sop's Fables, Pilpay, 
Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, 
Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single 



i88 IRcpresentative /ilbcn 



men. In the composition of such works, the 
time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the 
carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, 
all think for us. Every book supplies its time 
with one good word ; every municipal law, 
every trade, every folly of the day, and the 
generic catholic genius who is not afraid or 
ashamed to owe his originality to the originality 
of all, stands with the next age as the recorder 
and embodiment of his own. 

We have to thank the researches of anti- 
quaries, and the Shakspeare Society, for as- 
certaining the steps of the English drama, from 
the Mysteries celebrated in churches and by 
churchmen, and the final detachment from the 
church, and the completion of secular plays, 
from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton's 
Needle, down to the possession of the stage by 
the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, re- 
modelled, and finally made his own. Elated 
with success, and piqued by the growing interest 
of the problem, they have left no book-stall 
unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no 
file of old yellow accounts to decompose in 
damp and worms, so keen was the hope to dis- 
cover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or 
not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, 
whether he kept school, and why he left in his 
will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, 
his wife. 

There is somewhat touching in the madness 
with which the passing age mischooses the 



Sbaftspcare ; or, ^be ipoet 189 



object on which all candles shine, and all eyes 
are turned ; the care with which it registers 
every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth, and 
King James, and the Essexes, Leicesters, 
Burleighs, and Buckinghams ; and let pass with- 
out a single valuable note the founder of another 
dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor 
dynasty to be remembered, — the man who 
carries the Saxon race in him by the inspira- 
tion which feeds him, and on whose thoughts 
the foremost people of the world are now for 
some ages to be nourished, and minds to re- 
ceive this and not another bias. A popular 
player, — nobody suspected he was the poet of 
the human race ; and the secret was kept as 
faithfully from poets and intellectual men, as 
from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, 
who took the inventory of the human under- 
standing for his times, never mentioned his 
name. Ben Jonson, though we have strained 
his few words of regard and panegyric, had no 
suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vi- 
brations he was attempting. He no doubt 
thought the praise he has conceded to him 
generous, and esteemed himself, out of all 
question, the better poet of the two. 

If it need wit to know wit, according to the 
proverb, Shakspeare's time should be capable 
of recognizing it. Sir Henry Wotton was born 
four years after Shakspeare, and died twenty- 
three years after him ; and I find among his 
correspondents and acquaintances, the follow- 



190 IRepresentative /iRcn 



ing persons : Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, 
Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir 
Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, 
Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, 
Bellarmine, Charles Cotton, John Pym, John 
Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul 
Sarpi, Arminius ; with all of whom exist some 
token of his having communicated, without 
enumerating many others, whom doubtless he 
saw, — Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, 
Massinger, two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman, 
and the rest. Since the constellation of great 
men who appeared in Greece in the time of 
Pericles, there was never any such society ; — 
yet their genius failed them to find out the 
best head in the universe. Our poet's mask 
was impenetrable. You cannot see the mount- 
ain near. It took a century to make it sus- 
pected ; and not until two centuries had passed, 
after his death, did any criticism which we 
think adequate begin to appear. It was not 
possible to write the history of Shakspeare 
till now ; for he is the father of German 
literature : it was on the introduction of 
Shakspeare into German by Lessing, and the 
translation of his works by Wieland and Schle- 
gel, that the rapid burst of German literature 
was most intimately connected. It was not 
until the nineteenth century, whose speculative 
genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the 
tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering 
readers. Now, literature, philosophy, and 



Sbaftgpearc; or, ^be poet 191 



thought, are Shakspearized. His mind is the 
horizon beyond which, at present, we do not 
see. Our ears are educated to music by his 
rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only 
critics who have expressed our convictions 
with any adequate fidelity : but there is in all 
cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his 
superlative power and beauty, which, like 
Christianity, qualifies the period. 

The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all 
directions, advertised the missing facts, offered 
money for any information that will lead to 
proof ; and with what results ? Beside some 
important illustration of the history of the 
English stage, to which I have adverted, they 
have gleaned a few facts touching the property, 
and dealings in regard to property, of the poet. 
It appears that, from year to year, he owned a 
larger share in the Blackfriars' Theatre : its 
wardrobe and other appurtenances were his : 
that he bought an estate in his native village, 
with his earnings, as writer and shareholder ; 
that he lived in the best house in Stratford ; 
was intrusted by his neighbors with their com- 
missions in London, as of borrowing money, 
and the like ; that he was a veritable farmer. 
About the time when he was writing Macbeth, 
he sues Philip Rogers, in the borough-court 
of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, 
for corn delivered to him at different times ; 
and, in all respects, appears as a good hus- 
band, with no reputation for eccentricity or 



192 IReprescntatfve /iften 



excess. He was a good-natured sort of man, 
an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in 
any striking manner distinguished from other 
actors and managers. I admit the importance 
of this information. It was well worth the 
pains that have been taken to procure it. 

But whatever scraps of information concern- 
ing his condition these researches may have 
rescued, they can shed no light upon that in- 
finite invention which is the concealed magnet 
of his attraction for us. We are very clumsy 
writers of history. We tell the chronicle of 
parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, school- 
mates, earning of money, marriage, publication 
of books, celebrity, death ; and when we have 
come to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation 
appears between it and the goddess-born ; and 
it seems as if, had we dipped at random into 
the " Modern Plutarch," and read any other 
life there, it would have fitted the poems as 
well. It is the essence of poetry to spring, 
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from 
the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse 
all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and 
Collier, have wasted their oil. The famed 
theatres, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the 
Park, and Tremont, have vainly assisted. 
Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Mac- 
ready, dedicate their lives to this genius ; him 
they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. The 
genius knows them not. The recitation be- 
gins ; one golden word leaps out immortal from 



Sbaftspcare ; or, ZTbe ipoet 193 



all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments 
us with invitations to its own inaccessible 
homes. I remember, I went once to see the 
Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the 
English stage ; and all I then heard, and all I 
now remember, of the tragedian, was that in 
which the tragedian had no part ; simply, 
Hamlet's question to the ghost, — 

" What may this mean, 
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon ? " 

That imagination which dilates the closet he 
writes in to the world's dimension, crowds it 
with agents in rank and order, as quickly 
reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of 
the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for 
us the illusions of the green-room. Can any 
biography shed light on the localities into 
which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits 
me ? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary 
or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in 
Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation ? 
The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone 
Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, " the 
antres vast and desarts idle," of Othello's 
captivity, — where is the third cousin, or grand- 
nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or 
private letter, that has kept one word of those 
transcendent secrets ? In fine, in this drama, 
as in all great works of art, — in the Cyclopaean 
architecture of Egypt and India ; in the Phidian 
13 



194 IRepresentative ^en 



sculpture ; the Gothic minsters ; the Italian 
painting ; the Ballads of Spain and Scotland, 
— the Genius draws -up the ladder after him, 
when the creative age goes up to heaven, and 
gives way to a new, who see the works, and 
ask in vain for a history. 

Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shaks- 
peare ; and even he can tell nothing, except 
to the Shakspeare in us ; that is, to our most 
apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He can- 
not step from off his tripod, and give us 
anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the 
antique documents extricated, analyzed, and 
compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; 
and now read one of those skyey sentences, — 
aerolites, — which seem to have fallen out of 
heaven, and which, not your experience, but 
the man within the breast, has accepted as 
words of fate ; and tell me if they match ; if 
the former account in any manner for the 
latter ; or, which gives the most historical in- 
sight into the man. 

Hence, though our external history is so 
meagre, yet, with Shakspeare for biographer, 
instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we have really 
the information which is material, that which 
describes character and fortune ; that which, 
if we were about to meet the man and deal 
with him, would most import us to know. We 
have his recorded convictions on those ques- 
tions which knock for answer at every heart, — 
on life and death, on love, on wealth and 



Sbaftspeare ; or, Zbc IPoet 195 



poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways 
whereby we come at them ; on the characters 
of men, and the influences, occult and open, 
which affect their fortunes : and on those mys- 
terious and demoniacal powers which defy our 
science, and which yet interweave their mal- 
ice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who 
ever read the volume of the Sennets, without 
finding that the poet had there revealed, under 
masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the 
lore of friendship and of love; the confusion 
of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at 
the same time, the most intellectual of men ? 
What trait of his private mind has he hidden 
in his dramas ? One can discern, in his ample 
pictures of the gentleman and the king, what 
forms and humanities pleased him ; his delight 
in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in 
cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, let 
Antonio the merchant, answer for his great 
heart. So far from Shakspeare being the least 
known, he is the one person, in all modern his- 
tory, known to us. What point of morals, of 
manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, 
of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not 
settled ? What mystery has he not signified 
his knowledge of .'' What office or function, 
or district of man's work, has he not remem- 
bered ? What king has he not taught state, as 
Talma tau2:ht Napoleon } What maiden has 
not found him finer than her delicacy ? What 
lover has he not outloved } What sage has he 



196 IReprcsentativc ^cn 



not outseen ? What gentleman has he not in- 
structed in the rudeness of his behavior ? 

Some able and appreciating critics think no 
criticism on Shakspeare valuable, that does 
not rest purely on the dramatic merit ; that he 
is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I 
think as highly as these critics of his dramatic 
merit, but still think it secondary. He was a 
full man, who liked to talk ; a brain exhaling 
thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, 
found the drama next at hand. Had he been 
less, we should have had to consider how well 
he filled his place, how good a dramatist he 
was, — and he is the best in the world. But it 
turns out, that what he has to say is of that 
weight, as to withdraw some attention from 
the vehicle ; and he is like some saint whose 
history is to be rendered into all languages, 
into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, 
and cut up into proverbs ; so that the occasions 
which gave the saint's meaning the form of a 
conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of 
laws, is immaterial compared with the univer- 
sality of its application. So it fares with the 
wise Shakspeare and his book of life. He 
wrote the airs for all our modern music : he 
wrote the text of modern life ; the text of 
manners : he drew the man of England and 
Europe ; the father of the man in America : 
he drew the man and described the day, 
and what is done in it : he read the hearts 
of men and women, their probity, and their 



Sbaftspeare ; or, Zbc poet 197 



second thought, and wiles ; the wiles of in- 
nocence, and the transitions by which virtues 
and vices slide into their contraries : he could 
divide the mother's part from the father's part 
in the face of the child, or draw the fine de- 
marcations of freedom and of fate : he knew 
the laws of repression which make the police 
of nature : and all the sweets and all the ter- 
rors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but 
as softly as the landscape lies on the eye. 
And the importance of this wisdom of life 
sinks the form, as of Drama or Epic, out of 
.notice. 'Tis like making a question concern- 
ing the paper on which a king's message is 
written. 

Shakspeare is as much out of the category 
of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. 
He is inconceivably wise ; the others, con- 
ceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle 
into Plato's brain, and think from thence ; but 
not into Shakspeare's. We are still out of 
doors. For executive faculty, for creation, 
Shakspeare is unique. No man can imagine 
it better. He was the farthest reach of sub- 
tlety compatible with an individual self, — the 
subtilest of authors, and only just wdthin the 
possibility of authorship. With this wisdom of 
life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and 
of lyric power. He clothed the creatures of his 
legend with form and sentiments, as if they 
were people who had lived under his roof ; 
and few real men have left such distinct char- 



198 IRepresentative /nben 



acters as these fictions. And they spoke in 
language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents 
never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did 
he harp on one string. An omnipresent 
humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. Give 
a man of talents a story to tell, and his par- 
tiality will presently appear. He has certain 
observations, opinions, topics, which have some 
accidental prominence, and which he disposes 
all to exhibit. He crams this part, and starves 
that other part, consulting not the fitness of the 
thing, but his fitness and strength. But 
Shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate 
topic ; but all is duly given ; no veins, no curl-' 
osities : no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no man- 
nerist is he : he has no discoverable egotism : the 
great he tells greatly ; the small subordinate- 
ly. He is wise without emphasis or assertion ; 
he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the 
land into mountain slopes without effort, and by 
the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, 
and likes as well to do the one as the other. 
This makes that equality of power in farce, 
tragedy, narrative, and love-songs ; a merit so 
incessant, that each reader is incredulous of 
the perception of other readers. 

This power of expression, or of transferring 
the inmost truth of things into music and verse, 
makes him the type of the poet, and has added 
a new problem to metaphysics. This is that 
which throws him into natural history, as a 
main pioduction of the globe, and as announc- 



Sbaftspeare ; or, ^be ipoet 199 



ing new eras and ameliorations. Things were 
mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur: 
he could paint the fine with precision, the great 
with compass ; the tragic and the comic indif- 
ferently, and without any distortion or favor. 
He carried his powerful execution into minute 
details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash 
or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain ; 
and yet these like nature's, will bear the scru- 
tiny of the solar microscope. 

In short, he is the chief example to prove 
that more or less of production, more or fe\^er 
pictures, is a thing indifferent. He had the 
power to make one picture. Daguerre learned 
how to let one flower etch its image on his 
plate of iodine ; and then proceeds at leisure 
to etch a million. There are always objects ; 
but there was never representation. Here is 
perfect representation, at last ; and now let 
the world of figures sit for their portraits. No 
recipe can be given for the making of a 
Shakspeare ; but the possibility of the trans- 
lation of things into song is demonstrated. 

His lyric power lies in the genius' of the 
piece. The sonnets, though their excellence 
is lost in the splendor of the dramas, are as 
inimitable as they : and it is not a merit of 
lines, but a total merit of the piece ; like the 
tone of voice of some incomparable person, 
so is this a speech of poetic beings, and 
any clause as unproducible now as a whole 
poem. 



200 IRcpresentative /iRen 



Though the speeches in the plays, and 
single lines, have a beauty which tempts the 
ear to pause on them for their euphuism, yet 
the sentence is so loaded with meaning, and 
so linked with its foregoers and followers, 
that the logician is satisfied. His means are 
as admirable as his ends ; every subordinate 
invention, by which he helps himself to con- 
nect some irreconcilable opposites, is a poem 
too. He is not reduced to dismount and 
walk, because his horses are running off 
with him in some distant direction : he always 
rides. 

The finest poetry was first experience : but 
the thought has suffered a transformation 
since it was an experience. Cultivated men 
often attain a good degree of skill in writing 
verses ; but it is easy to read, through their 
poems, their personal history : any one ac- 
quainted with parties can name every figure : 
this is Andrew, and that is Rachel. The 
sense thus remains prosaic. It is a caterpillar 
with wings, and not yet a butterfly. In the 
poet's mind, the fact has gone quite over into 
the new element of thought, and has lost all 
that is exuvial. This generosity abides with 
Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and 
closeness of his pictures, that he knows the 
lesson by heart. Yet there is not a trace of 
egotism. 

One more royal trait properly belongs to the 
poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which 



Sbaftspcarc; or, ^be poet 201 



no man can be a poet, — for beauty is his aim. 
He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for 
its grace : he delights in the world, in man, in 
woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from 
them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, 
he sheds over the universe. Epicurus relates, 
that poetry hath such charms that a lover might 
forsake his mistress to partake of them. And 
the true bards have been noted for their firm 
and cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine ; 
Chaucer is glad and erect ; and Saadi says, 
^' It was rumored abroad that I was penitent ; 
but what had I to do with repentance ? " Not 
less sovereign and cheerful, — much more sov- 
ereign and cheerful is the tone of Shakspeare. 
His name suggests joy and emancipation to 
the heart of men. If he should appear in any 
company of human souls, who would not 
march in his troop ? He touches nothing that 
does not borrow health and longevity from his 
festive style. 

And now, how stands the account of man 
with this bard and benefactor, when in soli- 
tude, shutting our ears to the reverberations of 
his fame, we seek to strike the balance .'' Soli- 
tude has austere lessons ; it can teach us to 
spare both heroes and poets ; and it weighs 
Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the 
halfness and imperfection of humanity. 

Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw 
the splendor of meaning that plays over the 



202 IRcpresentatipe /IBen 



visible world ; knew that a tree had another 
use than for apples, and corn another than for 
meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage 
and roads : that these things bore a second 
and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems 
of its thoughts, and conveying in all their 
natural history a certain mute commentary on 
human life. Shakspeare employed them as 
colors to compose his picture. He rested 
in their beauty ; and never took the step which 
seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to 
explore the virtue which resides in these 
symbols, and imparts this power, — what is 
that which they themselves say ? He con- 
verted the elements, which waited on his 
command, into entertainments. He was 
master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as 
if one should have, through majestic powers 
of science, the comets given into his hand, or 
the planets and their moons, and should draw 
them from their orbits to glare with the munic- 
ipal fireworks on a holiday night, and adver- 
tise in all towns, " very superior pyrotechny 
this evening ! " Are the agents of nature, and 
the power to understand them, worth no more 
than a street serenade, or the breath of a 
cigar ? One remembers again the trumpet- 
text in the Koran — "The heavens and the 
earth, and all that is between them, think ye 
we have created them in jest ? " As long as 
the question is of talent and mental power, 
the world of men has not his equal to show. 



Sbaftspeare; or, ^be IPoct 203 



But when the question is to Hfe, and its 
materials, and its auxiUaries, how does he 
profit me ? What does it signify? It is but 
a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-Night's Dream, 
or a Winter Evening's Tale : what signifies 
another picture more or less ? The Egyptian 
verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to 
mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. 
I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other 
admirable men have led lives in some sort of 
keeping with their thought ; but this man, in 
wide contrast. Had he been less, had he 
reached only the common measure of great 
authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, 
we might leave the fact in the twilight of human 
fato : but, that this man of men, he who gave 
to the science of mind a new and larger sub- 
ject than had ever existed, and planted the 
standard of humanity some furlongs forward 
into Chaos, — that he should not be wise for 
himself, — it must even go into the world's 
history, that the best poet led an obscure and 
profane life, using his genius for the public 
amusement. 

Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite, 
German, and Swede, beheld the same objects : 
they also saw through them that which was 
contained. And to what purpose .'' The beauty 
straightway vanishes ; they read command- 
ments, all-excluding mountainous duty ; an 
obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, 
fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless. 



204 TRepvescntativc /ilben 



a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered 
round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and 
curse, behind us ; with doomsdays and pur- 
gatorial and penal fires before us ; and the 
heart of the seer and the heart of the listener 
sank in them. 

It must be conceded that these are half- 
views of half-men. The world still wants its 
poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle 
with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in 
graves with Swedenborg the mourner ; but who 
shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspira- 
tion. For knowledge will brighten the sun- 
shine ; right is more beautiful than private 
affection ; and love is compatible with univer- 
sal wisdom. 



NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE 
WORLD^ 



VI. 



Napoleon ; or, The Man of The 
World. 



Among the eminent persons of the nine- 
teenth century, Bonaparte is far the best 
known, and the most powerful ; and owes his 
predominance to the fidehty with which he 
expresses the tone of thought and belief, the 
aims of the masses of active and cultivated 
men. It is Swedenborg's theory, that every 
organ is made up of homogeneous particles : 
or, as it is sometimes expressed, every whole 
is made of similars ; that is, the lungs are com- 
posed of infinitely small lungs ; the liver, of 
infinitely small livers ; the kidney, of little 
kidneys, etc. Following this analogy, if any 
man is found to carry with him the power and 
affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon is 
France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is because the 
people whom he sways are little Napoleons. 

In our society, there is a standing antago- 
nism between the conservative and the demo- 



2o8 IRepresentative ^en 



cratic classes ; between those who have made 
their fortunes, and the young and the poor 
who have fortunes to make ; between the 
interests of dead labor, — that is, the labor of 
hands long ago still in the grave, which labor 
is now entombed in money stocks, or in land 
and buildings owned by idle capitalists, — and 
the interests of living labor, which seeks to 
possess itself of land, and buildings, and 
money stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, 
illiberal, hating innovation, and continually 
losing numbers by death. The second class is 
selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, 
always outnumbering the other, and recruiting 
its numbers every hour by births. It desires 
to keep open every avenue to the competition 
of all, and to multiply avenues ; — the class of 
business men in America, in England, in 
France, and throughout Europe ; the class of 
industry and skill. Napoleon is its represent- 
ative. The instinct of active, brave, able 
men, throughout the middle class everywhere, 
has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate 
Democrat. He had their virtues, and their 
vices; above all, he had their spirit or aim. 
That tendency is material, pointing at a sen- 
sual success, and employing the richest and 
most various means to that end ; conversant 
with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, 
widely and accurately learned and skilful, but 
subordinating all intellectual and spiritual 
forces into means to a material success. To 



IRapolcon ; or, ^be ^an of tbe IKIloclD 209 



be the rich man, is the end. " God has 
granted," says the Koran, "to every people 
a prophet in its own tongue." Paris, and 
London, and New York, the spirit of com- 
merce, of money, and material power, were 
also to have their prophet ; and Bonaparte 
was qualified and sent. 

Every one of the million readers of anec- 
dotes, or memoirs, or lives of Napoleon, de- 
lights in the page, because he studies in it 
his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly 
modern, and, at the highest point of his fort- 
unes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. 
He is no saint, — to use his own word, "no 
capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. 
The man in the street finds in him the qualities 
and powers of other men in the street. He 
finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, 
by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a 
commanding position, that he could indulge 
all those tastes which the common man pos- 
sesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny: 
good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, 
dinners, servants without number, personal 
weight, the execution of his ideas, the stand- 
ing in the attitude of a benefactor to all per- 
sons about him, the refined enjoyments of 
pictures, statues, music, palaces, and conven- 
tional honors, — precisely what is agreeable to 
the heart of every man in the nineteenth cent- 
ury, — this powerful man possessed. 

It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of 
14 



210 IRepresentatfve fUbcn 



adaptation to the mind of the masses around 
him becomes not merely representative, but 
actually a monopolizer and usurper of other 
minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every 
good thought, every good word, that was 
spoken in France. Dumont relates, that he 
sat in the gallery of the Convention, and 
heard Mirabeau make a speech. It struck 
Dumont that he could fit it with a peroration, 
which he wrote in pencil immediately, and 
showed to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord 
Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the even- 
ing, showed it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read 
it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he 
would incorporate it into his harangue, to- 
morrow, to the Assembly. " It is impossible," 
said Dumont, " as, unfortunately, I have shown 
it to Lord Elgin." " If you have shown it to 
Lord Elgin, and to fifty persons beside, I shall 
still speak it to-morrow : " and he did speak 
it, with much effect, at the next day's session. 
For Mirabeau, with his overpowering person- 
ality, felt that these things, which his presence 
inspired, were as much his own, as if he had 
said them, and that his adoption of them gave 
them their weight. Much more absolute and 
centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau's 
popularity, find to much more than his predomi- 
nance in France. Indeed, a man of Napoleon's 
stamp almost ceases to have a private speech 
and opinion. He is so largely receptive, and 
is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for 



IRapoleon ; or, ^be /llban ot tbe TKHorlO 2 1 1 



all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the age 
and country. He gains the battle ; he makes 
the code ; he makes the system of weights and 
measures ; he levels the Alps ; he builds the 
road. All distinguished engineers, savants, 
statists, report to him : so likewise do all good 
heads in every kind : he adopts the best meas- 
ures, sets his stamp on them, and not these 
alone, but on every happy and memorable ex- 
pression. Every sentence spoken by Napo- 
leon, and every line of his writing, deserves 
reading, as it is the sense of France. 

Bonaparte was the idol of common men, 
because he had in transcendent degree the 
qualities and powers of common men. There 
is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the 
lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of 
cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought, in 
common with that great class he represented, 
for power and wealth, — but Bonaparte, 
specially, without any scruple as to the means. 
All the sentiments which embarrass men's 
pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The 
sentiments were for women and children. 
Fontanes, in 1804, expressed Napoleon's own 
sense, when, in behalf of the Senate, he ad- 
dressed him, — " Sire, the desire of perfection 
is the worst disease that ever afflicted the 
human mind." The advocates of liberty, and 
of progress, are " ideologists ; " — a word of 
contempt often in his mouth ; — " Necker is an 
ideologist : " " Lafayette is an ideologist." 



212 IReprcsentative IUbcn 



An Italian proverb, too well known, declares 
that, " if you would succeed, you must not be 
too good." It is an advantage, within certain 
limits, to have renounced the dominion of the 
sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity ; 
since, what was an impassable bar to us, and 
still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon 
for our purposes ; just as the river which was 
a formidable barrier, winter transforms into 
the smoothest of roads. 

Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments 
and affections, and would help himself with 
his hands and his head. With him is no 
miracle, and no magic. He is a worker in 
brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in 
buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very 
consistent and wise master-workman. He is 
never weak and literary, but acts with the 
solidity and the precision of natural agents. 
He has not lost his native sense and sympathy 
with things. Men give way before such a man 
as before natural events. To be sure, there are 
men enough who are immersed in things, as 
farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics gener- 
ally ; and we know how real and solid such men 
appear in the presence of scholars and gram- 
marians : but these men ordinarily lack the 
power of arrangement, and are like hands with- 
out a head. But Bonaparte superadded to this 
mineral and animal force, insight and general- 
ization, so that men saw in him combined the 
natural and the intellectual power, as if the sea 



IRapoleon; or, ^be /IRan ot tbc MorlO 213 



and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. 
Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose 
him. He came unto his own, and they received 
him. This ciphering operative knows what he 
is working with, and what is the product. He 
knew the properties cf gold and iron, of wheels 
and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and re- 
quired that each should do after its kind. 

The art of war was the game in which he 
exerted his arithmetic. It consisted, accord- 
ing to him, in having always more forces than 
the enemy, on the point v^^here the enemy is 
attacked, or where he attacks : and his whole 
talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and 
evolution, to march always on the enemy at 
an angle, and destroy his forces in detail. It 
is obvious that a very small force, skilfully 
and rapidly manoeuvring, so as always to bring 
two men against one at the point of engage- 
ment, will be an overmatch for a much larger 
body of men. 

The times, his constitution, and his early 
circumstances, combined to develop this pat- 
tern democrat. He had the virtues of his 
class, and the conditions for their activity. 
That common sense, which no sooner respects 
any end, than it finds the means to effect it ; 
the delight in the use of means ; in the choice, 
simplification, and combining of means ; the 
directness and thoroughness of his work ; the 
prudence with which all was seen, and the 
energy with which all was done, make him the 



214 IRepresentative fK^cn 



natural organ and head of what I may almost 
call, from its extent, the moder?i party. 

Nature must have far the greatest share in 
every success, and so in his. Such a man was 
wanted, and such a man was born ; a man of 
stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback 
sixteen or seventeen hours, of going many days 
together without rest or food, except by 
snatches, and with the speed and spring of a 
tiger in action ; a man not embarrassed by any 
scruples ; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, 
and of a perception which did not suffer itself 
to be balked or misled by any pretences of 
others, or any superstition, or any heat or 
haste of his own. " My hand of iron," he 
said, " was not at the extremity of my arm : it 
was immediately connected with my head." 
He respected the power of nature and fortune, 
and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of 
valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opin- 
ionativeness and waging war with nature. 
His favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star : 
and he pleased himself, as well as the people, 
when he styled himself the " Child of Des- 
tiny." " They charge me," he said, " with 
the commission of great crimes : men of my 
stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has 
been more simple than my elevation : 'tis in 
vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime : it was 
owing to the peculiarity of the times, and to 
my reputation of having fought well against 
the enemies of my country. I have always 



Irtapoleon; ox.Zbc /Bban ot tbe TKHorlO 215 



marched with the opinion of great masses, 
and with events. Of what use, then, would 
crimes be to me ? " Again he said, speaking 
of his son, " My son cannot replace me ; I 
could not replace myself. I am the creature 
of circumstances." 

He had a directness of action never before 
combined with so much comprehension. He 
is a realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused 
truth-obscuring persons. He sees where the 
matter hinges, throws himself on the precise 
point of resistance, and slights all other con- 
siderations. He is strong in the right manner, 
namely, by insight. He never blundered into 
victory, but won his battles in his head, before 
he won them on the field. His principal 
means are in himself. He asks counsel of 
no other. In 1796, he writes to the Direc- 
tory : " I have conducted the campaign with- 
out consulting any one. I should have done 
no good, if I had been under the necessity of 
conforming to the notions of another person. 
I have gained some advantages over superior 
forces, and when totally destitute of every- 
thing, because, in the persuasion that your 
confidence was reposed in me, my actions 
were as prompt as my thoughts." 

History is full, down to this day, of the 
imbecility of kings and governors. They are 
a class of persons much to be pitied, for they 
know not what they should do. The weavers 
strike for bread ; and the king and his minis- 



2i6 IRepresentative ^en 



ters, not knowing what to do, meet them with 
bayonets. But Napoleon understood his 
business. Here was a man who, in each 
moment and emergency, knew what to do 
next. It is an immense comfort and refresh- 
ment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of 
citizens. Few men have any next ; they live 
from hand to mouth, without plan, and are 
ever at the end of their line, and, after each 
action, wait for an impulse from abroad. 
Napoleon had been the first man of the world 
if his ends had been purely public. As he is, 
he inspires confidence and vigor by the ex- 
traordinary unity of his action. He is firm, 
sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing 
everything to his aim,— money, troops, gen- 
erals, and his own safety also, to his aim ; 
not misled, like common adventurers, by the 
splendor of his own means. " Incidents 
ought not to govern policy," he said, " but 
policy, incidents." " To be hurried away by 
every every event, is to have no political 
system at all." His victories were only so 
many doors, and he never for a moment lost 
sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and up- 
roar of the present circumstance. He knew 
what to do, and he flew to his mark. He 
would shorten a straight line to come at his 
object. Horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, 
be collected from his history, of the price at 
which he bought his successes ; but he must 
not therefore be set down as cruel ; but only 
as one who knew no impediment to his will ; 



flapoleon; or, Jibe /IRan ot tbe TMorlJ) 217 



not bloodthirsty, not cruel, — but wo to what 
thing or person stood in his way ! Not blood- 
thirsty, but not sparing of blood, — and pitiless. 
He saw only the object : the obstacle must 
give way. " Sire, General Clarke cannot 
combine with General Junot, for the dreadful 
fire of the Austrian battery." — " Let him 
carry the battery." — " Sire, every regiment that 
approaches the heavy artillery is sacrificed : 
Sire, what orders ? " — " Forward, forward ! " 
Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his 
Military Memoirs, the following sketch of a 
scene after the battle of Austerlitz. — " At the 
moment in which the Russian army was mak- 
ing its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on 
the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon 
came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 
'You are losing time,' he cried; *fire upon 
those masses ; they must be engulfed ; fire 
upon the ice ! ' The order remained unexe- 
cuted for ten minutes. In vain several officers 
and myself were placed on the slope of a hill 
to produce the effect : their balls and mine 
rolled upon the ice, without breaking it up. 
Seeing that, I tried a simple method of elevat- 
ing light howitzers. The almost perpendicular 
fall of the heavy projectiles produced the 
desired effect. My method was immediately 
followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less 
than no time we buried " some * " thousands of 

* As I quote at second-hand, and cannot procure 
Seruzier, I dare not adopt the high figure 1 find. 



2iS IRcprescntative IHScn 



Russians and Austrians under the waters of 
the lake." 

In the plenitude of his resources, every ob- 
stacle seemed to vanish. "There shall be no 
Alps," he said ; and he built his perfect roads, 
climbing by graded galleries their steepest 
precipices, until Italy was as open to Paris as 
any town in France. He laid his bones to, 
and wrought for his crown. Having decided 
what was to be done, he did that with might 
and main. He put out all his strength. He 
risked everything, and spared nothing, neither 
ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor 
generals, nor himself. 

We like to see every thing do its office after 
its kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattle- 
snake ; and, if fighting be the best mode of 
adjusting national differences (as large major- 
ities of men seem to agree), certainly Bona- 
parte was right in making it thorough. " The 
grand principle of war, " he said, " was, that 
an army ought always to be ready, by day and 
by night, and at all hours, to make all the re- 
sistance it is capable of making." He never 
economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile 
position, rained a torrent of iron, — shells, balls, 
grape-shot, — to annihilate all defence. On 
any point of resistance, he concentrated squad- 
ron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, 
until it was swept out of existence. To a reg- 
iment of horse-chasseurs at Lobenstein, two 
days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon said, 



IRapolcon; or, ^be /ffi>an ot tbe TlBlorlC) 219 



" My lads, you must not fear death ; when 
soldiers brave death, they drive him into the 
enemy's ranks." In the fury of assault, he no 
more spared himself. He went to the edge 
of his possibility. It is plain that in Italy he 
did what he could, and all that he could. He 
came, several times, within an inch of ruin ; 
and his own person was all but lost. He was 
flung into the marsh at Areola. The Austrians 
were between him and his troops, in the melee, 
and he was brought off with desperate efforts. 
At Lonato, and at other places, he was on the 
point of being taken prisoner. He fought 
sixty battles. He had never enough. Each 
victory was a new weapon. " My power 
would fall, were I not to support it by new 
achievements. Conquest has made me what 
I am, and conquest must maintain me." He 
felt, with every wise man, that as much life is 
needed for conservation as for creation. We 
are always in peril, always in a bad plight, 
just on the edge of destruction, and only to 
be saved by invention and courage. 

This vigor was guarded and tempered by 
the coldest prudence and punctuality. A 
thunderbolt in the attack, he was found in- 
vulnerable in his intrenchments. His very 
attack was never the inspiration of courage, 
but the result of calculation. His idea of the 
best defence consists in being still the attack- 
ing party. " My ambition," he says, " was 
great, but was of a cold nature." In one of 



220 IReprescntative ^en 

his conversations with Las Casas, he re- 
marked, " As to moral courage, I have rarely- 
met with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning kind; 
I mean unprepared courage, that which, is 
necessary on an unexpected occasion ; and 
which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, 
leaves full freedom of judgment and decis- 
ion : " and he did not hesitate to declare 
that he was himself eminently endowed with 
this " two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and 
that he had met with few persons equal to 
himself in this respect." 

Everything depended on the nicety of his 
combinations, and the stars were not more 
punctual than his arithmetic. His personal 
attention descended to the smallest par- 
ticulars. " At Montebello, I ordered Keller- 
mann to attack with eight hundred horse, and 
with these he separated the six thousand 
Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of 
the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half 
a league off, and required a quarter of an 
hour to arrive on the field of action ; and I 
have observed, that it is always these quarters 
of an hour that decide the fate of a battle." 
" Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte thought 
little about what he should do in case of suc- 
cess, but a great deal about what he should 
do in case of a reverse of fortune." The 
same prudence and good sense mark all his 
behavior. His instructions to his secretary at 
the Tuilleries are worth remembering. " Dur- 



IRapolcon; or, Zbc /!ftari ot tbe liaioclD 221 



ing the night, enter my chamber as seldom as 
possible. Do not awake me when you have 
any good news to communicate ; with that 
there is no hurry. But when you bring bad 
news, rouse me instantly, for then there is not 
a moment to be lost." It was a whimsical 
economy of the same kind which dictated his 
practice, when general in Italy, in regard to 
his burdensome correspondence. He directed 
Bourienne to leave all letters unopened for 
three weeks, and then observed with satis- 
faction how large a part of the correspondence 
had thus disposed of itself, and no longer re- 
quired an answer. His achievement of busi- 
ness was immense, and enlarges the known 
powers of man. There have been many 
working kings, from Ulysses to William of 
Orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of 
this man's performance. 

To these gifts of nature. Napoleon added 
the advantage of having been born to a pri- 
vate and humble fortune. In his latter days, 
he had the weakness of wishing to add to his 
crowns and badges the prescription of aristoc- 
racy : but he knew his debt to his austere 
education, and made no secret of his contempt 
for the born kings, and for " the hereditary 
asses," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. 
He said that, " in their exile, they had learned 
nothing, and forgot nothing." Bonaparte had 
passed through all the degrees of military 
service, but also was citizen before he was 



222 IRepreecntatlve UKscn 



emperor, and so has the key to citizenship. 
His remarks and estimates discover the in- 
formation and justness of measurement of the 
middle class. Those who had to deal with 
him, found that he was not to be imposed 
upon, but could cipher as well as another man. 
This appears in all parts of his Memoirs, dic- 
tated at St. Helena. When the expenses of 
the empress, of his household, of his palaces, 
had accumulated great debts. Napoleon exam- 
ined the bills of the creditors himself, de- 
tected overcharges and errors, and reduced 
the claims by considerable sums. 

His grand weapon, namely, the millions 
whom he directed, he owed to the representa- 
tive character which clothed him. He in- 
terests us as he stands for France and for 
Europe ; and he exists as captain and king, 
only as far as the Revolution, or the interest 
of the industrious masses, found an organ and 
a leader in him. In the social interests, he 
knew the meaning and value of labor, and 
threw himself naturally on that side. I like 
an incident mentioned by one of his biogra- 
phers at St. Helena. " When walking with 
Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying 
heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and Mrs. 
Balcombe desired them, in rather an angry 
tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, say- 
ing, ' Respect the burden, Madam.' " In the 
time of the empire, he directed attention to the 
improvement and embellishment of the markets 



"Kapolcon; or, Zbc /IRan of tbe XDlorlD 223 



of the capital. " The market-place," he said, 
" is the Louvre of the common people." The 
principal works that have survived him are 
his magnificent roads. He filled the troops 
with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and com- 
panionship grew up between him and them, 
which the forms of his court never permitted 
between the officers and himself. They per- 
formed, under his eye, that which no others 
could do. The best document of his relation 
to his troops is the order of the day on the 
morning of the battle of Austerlitz, in which 
Napoleon promises the troops that he will 
keep his person out of reach of fire. This 
declaration, which is the reverse of that ordi- 
narily made by generals and sovereigns on the 
eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devo- 
tion of the army to their leader. 

But though there is in particulars this 
identity between Napoleon and the mass of 
the people, his real strength lay in their con- 
viction that he was their representative in his 
genius and aims, not only when he courted, 
but when he controlled and even when he dec- 
imated them by his conscriptions. He knew, 
as well as any Jacobin in France, how to phi- 
losophize on liberty and equality ; and, when 
allusion was made to the precious blood of 
centuries, which was spilled by the killing of 
the Due d'Enghien, he suggested, " Neither is 
my blood ditch-water." The people felt that 
no longer the throne was occupied, and the 



2 24 TRepreeentative /Bben 



land sucked of its nourishment, by a small 
class of legitimates, secluded from all com- 
munity with the children of the soil, and hold- 
ing the ideas and superstitions of a long-for- 
gotten state of society. Instead of that vam- 
pyre, a man of themselves held, in the Tuilleries, 
knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, 
of course, to them and their children, all 
places of power and trust. The day of sleepy, 
selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and 
opportunities of young men, was ended, and a 
day of expansion and demand was come. A 
market for all the powers and productions of 
man was opened ; brilliant prizes glittered in 
the eyes of youth and talent. The old, iron- 
bound, feudal France was changed into a 
young Ohio or New York ; and those who 
smarted under the immediate rigors of the new 
monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary 
severities of the military system which had 
driven out the oppressor. And even when the 
majority of the people had begun to ask, 
whether they had really gained anything under 
the exhausting levies of men and money of 
the new master, — the whole talent of the coun- 
try, in every rank and kindred, took his part, 
and defended him as its natural patron. In 
1814, when advised to rely on the higher 
classes, Napoleon said to those around him, 
*' Gentlemen, in the situation in which I stand, 
my only nobility is the rabble of the Fau- 
bourgs." 



IRapoleon; ov^Zbc /Iftan ot tbc MorlD 225 



Napoleon met this natural expectation. 
The necessity of his position required a hos- 
pitality to every sort of talent, and its appoint- 
ment to trusts ; and his feeling went along 
with this policy. Like every superior person, 
he undoubtedly felt a desire for men and com- 
peers, and a wish to measure his power with 
other masters, and an impatience of fools and 
underlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and 
found none. " Good God ! " he said, " how 
rare men are ! There are eighteen millions 
in Italy, and I have with difficulty found two, 
— Dandolo and Melzi." In later years, with 
larger experience, his respect for mankind was 
not increased. In a moment of bitterness, he 
said, to one of his oldest friends, " Men de- 
serve the contempt with which they inspire 
me. I have only to put some gold lace on the 
coat of my virtuous republicans, and they im- 
mediately become just what I wish them." 
This impatience at levity was, however, an 
oblique tribute of respect to those able persons 
who commanded his regard, not only when he 
found them friends and coadjutors, but also 
when they resisted his will. He could not 
confound Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette, and 
Bernadotte, with the danglers of his court ; 
and, in spite of the detraction which his sys- 
tematic egotism dictated toward the great cap- 
tains who conquered with and for him, ample 
acknowledgments are made by him to Lannes, 
Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix, Massena, Murat, Ney, 
IS 



226 IRepresentative /IRen 



and Augereau. If he felt himself their patron, 
and the founder of their fortunes, as when he 
said, " I made my generals out of mud," he 
could not hide his satisfaction in receiving 
from them a seconding and support commen- 
surate with the grandeur of his enterprise. In 
the Russian campaign, he was so much im- 
pressed by the courage and resources of 
Marshal Ney, that he said, *' I have two hun- 
dred millions in my coffers, and I would give 
them all for Ney." The characters v;hich he 
has drawn of several of his marshals are dis- 
criminating, and, though they did not content 
the insatiable vanity of French officers, are, no 
doubt, substantially just. And, in fact, every 
species of merit was sought and advanced un- 
der his government. "I know," he said, "the 
depth and draught of water of every one of my 
generals." Natural power was sure to be well 
received at his court. Seventeen men, in his 
time, were raised from common soldiers to the 
rank of king, marshal, duke, or general ; and 
the crosses of his Legion of Honor were given 
to personal valor, and not to family connexion. 
"When soldiers have been baptized in the 
fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in 
my eyes." 

When a natural king becomes a titular king, 
everybody is pleased and satisfied. The Rev- 
olution entitled the strong populace of the 
Faubourg St. Antoine, and every horse-boy 
and powder-monkey in the army, to look on 



mapolcon; or, ^be /Iftan of tbe MorlD 227 



Napoleon, as flesh of his flesh, and the creature 
of his party : but there is something in the 
success of grand talent which enlists an univer- 
sal sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense 
and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all 
reasonable men have an interest ; and, as in- 
tellectual beings, we feel the air purified by 
the electric shock, when material force is over- 
thrown by intellectual energies. As soon as 
we are removed out of the reach of local and 
accidental partialities, man feels that Napoleon 
fights for him ; these are honest victories ; 
this strong steam-engine does our work. 
Whatever appeals to the imagination, by tran- 
scending the ordinary limits of human ability, 
wonderfully encourages and liberates us. 
This capacious head, revolving and disposing 
sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating 
such multitudes of agents ; this eye, which 
looked through Europe ; this prompt inven- 
tion ; this inexhaustible resource ; — what 
events ! what romantic pictures ! what strange 
situations ! — when spying the Alps, by a sun- 
set in the Sicilian sea ; drawing up his army 
for battle, in sight of the Pyramids, and saying 
to his troops, " From the tops of those 
pyramids, forty centuries look down on you ; " 
fording the Red Sea; wading in the gulf of 
the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptole- 
mais, gigantic projects agitated him. " Had 
Acre fallen, I should have changed the face 
of the world." His army, on the night of the 



228 IRepresentative /iBen 



battle of Austerlitz, which was the anniversary 
of his inauguration as Emperor, presented him 
with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the 
fight. Perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure 
he took in making these contrasts glaring ; as 
when he pleased himself with making kings 
wait in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, 
and at Erfurt. 

We cannot, in the universal imbecility, inde- 
cision, and indolence of men, sufhciently con- 
gratulate ourselves on this strong and ready 
actor, who took occasion by the beard, and 
showed us how much may be accomplished by 
the mere force of such virtues as all men pos- 
sess in less degrees ; namely, by punctuality, 
by personal attention, by courage, and thor- 
oughness. " The Austrians," he said, '' do not 
know the value of time." I should cite him, 
in his earlier years, as a model of prudence. 
His power does not consist in any wild or 
extravagant force ; in any enthusiasm, like 
Mahomet's ; or singular power of persuasion ; 
but in the exercise of common sense on each 
emergency, instead of abiding by rules and 
customs. The lesson he teaches is that which 
vigor always teaches, — that there is always 
room for it. To what heaps of cowardly 
doubts is not that man's life an answer. 
When he appeared, it was the belief of all 
military men that there could be nothing new 
in war ; as it is the belief of men to-day, that 
nothing new can be undertaken in politics, of 



IFlapoleon ; or, XLbc /IBan ot tbe MorlO 229 



in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farm- 
ing, or in our social manners and customs ; 
and as it is, at all times, the belief of society 
that the world is used up. But Bonaparte 
knew better than society ; and, moreover, 
knew that he knew better. I think all 
men know better than they do ; know that 
the institutions we so volubly commend are go- 
carts and baubles ; but they dare not trust 
their presentiments. Bonaparte relied on his 
own sense, and did not care a bean for other 
people's. The world treated his novelties just 
as it treats everybody's novelties, — made in- 
finite objection ; mustered all the impedi- 
ments ; but he snapped his finger at their ob- 
jections. " What creates great difficulty," he 
remarks, " in the profession of the land com- 
mander, is the necessity of feeding so many 
men and animals. If he allows himself to be 
guided by the commissaries, he will never stir, 
and all his expeditions will fail." An ex- 
ample of his common sense is what he says of 
the passage of the Alps in winter, which all 
writers, one repeating after the other, had 
described as impracticable. " The winter," 
says Napoleon, " is not the most unfavorable 
season for the passage of lofty mountains. 
The snow is then firm, the weather settled, 
and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, 
the real and only danger to be apprehended in 
the Alps. ' On those high mountains, there 
are often very fine days in December, of a dry 



230 IRepresentative /iRen 



cold, with extreme calmness in the air." Read 
his account, too, of the way in which battles 
are gained. " In all battles, a moment occurs, 
when the bravest troops, after having made 
the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. That 
terror proceeds from a want of confidence in 
their own courage ; and it only requires a 
slight opportunity, a pretence, to restore con- 
fidence to them. The art is to give rise to the 
opportunity, and to invent the pretence. At 
Areola, I won the battle with twenty-five horse- 
men. I seized that moment of lassitude, gave 
every man a trumpet, and gained the day with 
this handful. You see that two armies are 
two bodies which meet, and endeavor to 
frighten each other : a moment of panic occurs, 
and that moment must be turned to advantage. 
When a man has been present in many actions, 
he distinguishes that moment without diffi- 
culty; it is as easy as casting up an addi- 
tion." 

This deputy of the nineteenth century added 
to his gifts a capacity for speculation on gen- 
eral topics. He delighted in running through 
the range of practical, of literary, and of ab- 
stract questions. His opinion is always orig- 
inal, and to the purpose. On the voyage to 
Egypt, he liked, after dinner, to fix on three or 
four persons to support a proposition, and as 
many to oppose it. He gave a subject, and 
the discussions turned on questions of religion, 
the different kinds of government, and the art 



IRapoleon; or, ^be /llban of tbe MorlC) 231 



of war. One day, he asked, whether the 
planets were inhabited ? On another, what 
was the age of the world ? Then he proposed 
to consider the probability of the destruction 
of the globe, either by water or by fire ; at an- 
other time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments, 
and the interpretation of dreams. He was very 
fond of talking of religion. In 1806, he con- 
versed with Fournier, bishop of Montpellier, on 
matters of theology. There were two points on 
which they could not agree, viz., that of hell, 
and that of salvation out of the pale of the 
church. The Emperor told Josephine, that he 
disputed like a devil on these two points, on 
which the bishop was inexorable. To the phi- 
losophers he readily yielded all that was proved 
against religion as the work of men and time ; 
but he would not hear of materialism. One fine 
night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism, 
Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, " You 
may talk as long as you please, gentle- 
men, but who made all that .? " He delighted 
in the conversation of men of science, particu- 
larly of Monge and Berthollet; but the men of 
letters he slighted ; " they were manufacturers 
of phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of 
talking, and with those of its practitioners 
whom he most esteemed, — with Corvisart at 
Paris, and with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. 
*' Believe me," he said to the last, " we had 
better leave off all these remedies : life is a 
fortress which neither you nor I know any- 



22,2 IRcpresentative Men 



thing about. Why throw obstacles in the way 
of its defence ? Its own means are superior to 
all the apparatus of your laboratories. Cor- 
visart candidly agreed with me, that all your 
filthy mixtures are good for nothing. Medi- 
cine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, 
the results of which, taken collectively, are 
more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, 
air, and cleanliness, are the chief articles in 
my pharmacopeia." 

His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon 
and General Gourgaud, at St. Helena, have 
great value, after all the deduction that, it 
seems, is to be made from them, on account of 
his known disingenuousness. He has the good- 
nature of strength and conscious superiority. 
I admire his simple, clear narrative of his 
battles ; — good as Caesar's ; his good-natured 
and sufficiently respectful account of Marshal 
Wurmser and his other antagonists, and his 
own equality as a writer to his varying subject. 
The most agreeable portion is the Campaign 
in Egypt. 

He had hours of thought and wisdom. In 
intervals of leisure, either in the camp or the 
palace. Napoleon appears as a man of genius, 
directing on abstract questions the native 
appetite for truth, and the impatience of words, 
he was wont to show in war. He could enjoy 
every play of invention, a romance, a bo?t mot, 
as well as a stratagem in a campaign. He 
delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies, 



IRapoleon ; or, ^be /iRan ot tbc MorlD 233 



in a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a 
fiction, to which his voice and dramatic power 
lent every addition. 

I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the 
middle class of modern society; of the throng 
who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, 
manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aim- 
ing to be rich. He was the agitator, the de- 
stroyer of prescription, the internal improver, 
the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, 
the opener of doors and markets, the subverter 
of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich 
and aristocratic did not like him, England, the 
center of capital, and Rome and Austria, 
centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed 
him. The consternation of the dull and 
conservative classes, the terror of the foolish 
old men and old women of the Roman conclave, 
— who in their despair took hold of anything, 
and would cling to red-hot iron, — the vain 
attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, 
of the emperor of Austria to bribe him ; and 
the instinct of the young, ardent, and active 
men, everywhere, which pointed him out as 
the giant of the middle class, make his history 
bright and commanding. He had the virtues 
of the masses of his constituents : he had also 
their vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture 
has its reverse. But that is the fatal quality 
which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, 
that it is treacherous, and is bought by the 
breaking or weakening of the sentiments : and 



234 IRcpresentative l^cn 



it is inevitable that we should find the same fact 
in the history of this champion, who proposed 
to himself simply a brilliant career, without any 
stipulation or scruple concerning the means. 

Bonaparte was singularly destitute of gen- 
erous sentiments. The highest-placed individ- 
ual in the most cultivated age and population 
of the world, — he has not the merit of common 
truth and honesty. He is unjust to his 
generals ; egotistic, and monopolizing ; meanly 
stealing the credit of their great actions from 
Kellermann, from Bernadotte; intriguing to 
involve his faithful Junot in hopeless bank- 
ruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance 
from Paris, because the familiarity of his 
manners offends the new pride of his throne. 
He is a boundless liar. The official paper, his 
" Moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are proverbs 
for saying what he wished to be believed ; and 
worse, — he sat, in his premature old age, in his 
lonely island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates, 
and characters, and giving to history a theatri- 
cal eclat. Like all Frenchmen, he has a 
passion for stage effect. Every action that 
breathes of generosity is poisoned by this cal- 
culation. His star, his love of glory, his doc- 
trine of the immortality of the soul, are all 
French. " I must dazzle and astonish. If I 
were to give the liberty of the press, my power 
could not last three days." To make a great 
noise is his favorite design. " A great reputa- 
tion is a great noise : the more there is made, 



mapolcon ; or, Zbc /IRan of tbe 'QXHorlO 235 



the farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions, 
monuments, nations, all fall ; but the noise 
continues, and resounds in after ages." His 
doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His 
theory of influence is not flattering. " There 
are two levers for moving men, — interest and 
fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon 
it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. 
I do not even love my brothers : perhaps 
Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is 
my elder ; and Duroc, I love him too*; but 
why ? — because his character pleases me : he 
is stern and resolute, and, I believe, the fellow 
never shed a tear. For my part, I know very 
well that I have no true friends. As long as I 
continue to be what I am, I may have as many 
pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibil- 
ity to women : but men should be firm in heart 
and purpose, or they should have nothing to 
do with war and government." He was 
thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal, 
slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his 
interest dictated. He had no generosity ; but 
mere vulgar hatred : he was intensely selfish : 
he was perfidious : he cheated at cards : he 
was a prodigious gossip ; and opened letters ; 
and delighted in his infamous police ; and 
rubbed his hands with joy when he had inter- 
cepted some morsel of intelligence concerning 
the men and women about him, boasting that 
" he knew everything ; " and interfered with 
the cutting: the dresses of the women ; and 



236 IReprcsentatiPC /IBen 



listened after the hurrahs and the compliments 
of the street, incognito. His manners were 
coarse. He treated women with low familiarity. 
He had the habit of pulling their ears and 
pinching their cheeks, when he was in good 
humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers 
of men, and of striking and horse-play with 
them, to his last days. It does not appear 
that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that 
he was caught at it. In short, when you have 
penetrated through all the circles of power and 
splendor, you were not dealing with a gentle- 
man, at last ; but with an impostor and a rogue : 
and he fully deserves the epithet oi Jupiter 
Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter. 

In describing the two parties into which 
modern society divides itself, — the democrat 
and the conservative, — I said, Bonaparte rep- 
resents the democrat, or the party of men of 
business, against the stationary or conservative 
party. I omitted then to say, what is material 
to the statement, namely, that these two parties 
differ only as young and old. The democrat 
is a young conservative ; the conservative is 
an old democrat. The aristocrat is the demo- 
crat ripe, and gone to seed, — because both 
parties stand on the one ground of the supreme 
value of property, which one endeavors to get, 
and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be 
said to represent the whole history of this 
party, its youth and its age ; yes, and with 



mapoleou ; or, Zbc /Hban ot tbe WoclD 237 



poetic justice, its fate, in his own. The 
counter-revolution, the counter-party, still 
waits for its organ and representative, in a 
lover and a man of truly public and universal 
aims. 

Here was an experiment, under the most 
favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect 
without conscience. Never was such a leader 
so endowed, and so weaponed ; never leader 
found such aids and followers. And what was 
the result of this vast talent and power, of 
these immense armies, burned cities, squan- 
dered treasures, immolated millions of men, of 
this demoralized Europe ? It came to no result. 
All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, 
and left no trace. He left France smaller, 
poorer, feebler, than he found it ; and the whole 
contest for freedom was to be begun again. 
The attempt was, in principle, suicidal. France 
served him with life, and limb, and estate, as 
long as it could identify its interest with him ; 
but when men saw that after victory was an- 
other war ; after the destruction of armies, new 
conscriptions ; and they who had toiled so 
desperately were never nearer to the reward, 
— they could not spend what they had earned, 
nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in 
their chateaux, — they deserted him. Men 
found that his absorbing egotism was deadly 
to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, 
which inflicts a succession of shocks on any 
one who takes hold of it, producing spasms 



238 IReprescntatlve /iRen 



which contract the muscles of the hand, so 
that the man cannot open his fingers ; and the 
animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, 
until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So, 
this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, 
and absorbed the power and existence of those 
who served him ; and the universal cry of 
France, and of Europe, in 18 14, was, "enough 
of him ; " " assez de BoJiaparte.''^ 

It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all 
that in him lay, to live and thrive without 
moral principle. It was the nature of things, 
the eternal law of man and of the world, which 
baulked and ruined him ; and the result, in a 
million experiments, will be the same. Every 
experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, 
that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. 
The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the 
pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civiliza- 
tion is essentially one of property, of fences, 
of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delu- 
sions. Our riches will leave us sick ; there will 
be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine 
will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, 
which we can taste with all doors open, and 
which serves all men. 



GOETHE ; OR, THE WRITER. 



VII. 

Goethe; or, The Writer 



I FIND a provision, in the constitution of the 
world, for the writer or secretary, who is to re- 
port the doings of the miraculous spirit of life 
that everywhere throbs and works. His office 
is a reception of the facts into the mind, and 
then a selection of the eminent and character- 
istic experiences. 

Nature will be reported. All things are en- 
gaged in writing their history. The planet, 
the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The 
rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mount- 
ain ; the river, its channel in the soil ; the 
animal, its bones in the stratum ; the fern and 
leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The 
falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or 
the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or 
along the ground, but prints, in characters 
more or less lasting, a map of its march. 
Every act of the man inscribes itself in the 
memories of his fellows, and in his own man- 
i6 



242 IRepreecntatlve /IRen 



Tiers and face. The air is full of sounds ; the 
sky, of tokens ; the ground is all memoranda 
and signatures; and every object covered over 
with hints, v;hich speak to the intelligent. 

In nature, this self-registration is incessant, 
and the narrative is the print of the seal. It 
neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact. 
But nature strives upward ; and, in man, the 
report is something more than print of the 
seal. It is a new and finer form of the original. 
The record is alive, as that which it recorded 
is alive. In man, the memory is a kind of 
looking-glass, which, having received the im- 
ages of surrounding objects, is touched with 
life, and disposes them in a new order. The 
facts which transpired do not lie in it inert ; 
but some subside, and others shine ; so that 
soon we have a new picture, composed of the 
eminent experiences. The man cooperates. 
He loves to communicate ; and that which is 
for him to say lies as a load on his heart until 
it is delivered. But, besides the universal joy 
of conversation, some men are born with ex- 
alted powers for this second creation. Men 
are born to write. The gardener saves every 
slip, and seed, and peach-stone : his vocation 
is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the 
"writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds 
or experiences, comes to him as a model, and 
sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense 
that they say, that some things are undescrib- 
able. He believes that all that can be thought 



©octbc ; or, ^be Mritec 243 



can be written, first or last ; and he would re- 
port the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing 
so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes 
therefore commended to his pen, — and he will 
write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of 
reporting, and the universe is the possibility 
of being reported. In conversation, in calam- 
ity, he finds new materials ; as our German 
poet said, " some god gave me the power to 
paint what I suffer." He draws his rents from 
rage and pain. By acting rashly, he buys the 
power of talking wisely. Vexations, and a 
tempest of passion, only fill his sails ; as the 
good Luther writes, " When I am angry I can 
pray well, and preach well ; " and if we knew 
the genesis of fine strokes of eloquence, they 
might recall the complaisance of Sultan Amu- 
rath, who struck off some Persian heads, that 
his physician, Vesalius, might see the spasms 
in die muscles of the neck. His failures are 
the preparation of his victories. A new 
thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises him 
that all that he has yet learned and written is 
exoteric — is not the fact, but some rumor of 
the fact. What then ? Does he throw away 
the pen ? No ; he begins again to describe in 
the new light which has shined on him, — if, by 
some means, he may yet save some true word. 
Nature conspires. Whatever can be thought 
can be spoken, and still rises for utterance, 
though to rude and stammering organs. If 
they cannot compass it, it waits and works. 



244 IReprescntative I^cn 



until, at last, it moulds them to its perfect will, 
and is articulated. 

This striving after imitative expression, 
which one meets everywhere, is significant of 
the aim of nature, but is mere stenography. 
There are higher degrees, and nature has more 
splendid endowments for those whom she 
elects to a superior office ; for the class of 
scholars or writers, who see connection where 
the multitude see fragments, and who are im- 
peHed to exhibit the facts in order, and so to 
supply the axis on which the frame of things 
turns. Nature has dearly at heart the forma- 
tion of the speculative man, or scholar. It is 
an end never lost sight of, and is prepared in 
the original casting of things. He is no per- 
missive or accidental appearance, but an 
organic agent, one of the estates of the realm, 
provided and prepared, from of old and from 
everlasting, in the knitting and contexture of 
things. Presentiments, impulses, cheer him. 
There is a certain heat in the breast, which 
attends the perception of a primary truth, 
which is the shining of the spiritual sun down 
into the shaft of the mine. Every thought 
which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its 
emergency announces its own rank, — whether 
it is some whimsy, or whether it is a power. 

If he have his incitements, there is, on the 
other side, invitation and need enough of his 
gift. Society has, at all times, the same want, 
namely, of one sane man with adequate powers 



(Boetbe ; or, Zbe Wivitc 245 



of expression to hold up each object of mono- 
mania in its right relations. The ambitious 
and mercenary bring their last new mumbo- 
jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, railroad, Roman- 
ism, mesmerism, or California ; and, by de- 
taching the object from its relations, easily 
succeed in making it seen in a glare ; and a 
multitude go mad about it, and they are not 
to be reproved or cured by the opposite mul- 
titude, who are kept from this particular in- 
sanity by an equal frenzy on another crochet. 
But let one man have the comprehensive eye 
that can replace this isolated prodigy in its 
right neighborhood and bearings, — the illusion 
vanishes, and the returning reason of the com- 
munity thanks the reason of the monitor. 

The scholar is the man of the ages, but he 
must also wish with other men to stand well 
with his contemporaries. But there is a certain 
ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on 
the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, 
unless the scholars heed it. In this country, 
the emphasis of conversation, and of public 
opinion, commends the practical man ; and 
the solid portion of the community is named 
with significant respect in every circle. Our 
people are of Bonaparte's opinion concerning 
ideologists. Ideas are subversive of social 
order and comfort, and at last make a fool of 
the possessor. It is believed, the ordering a 
cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna ; 
or, the running up and down to procure a 



246 IRepresentative ^en 



company of subscribers to set a-going five or 
ten thousand spindles ; or, the negotiations of 
a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices 
and facility of country-people, to secure their 
votes in November, — is practical and com- 
mendable. 

If I were to compare action of a much 
higher strain with a life of contemplation, I 
should not venture to pronounce with much 
confidence in favor of the former. Mankind 
have such a deep stake in inward illumination, 
that there is much to be said by the hermit or 
monk in defence of his life of thought and 
prayer. A certain partiality, a headiness, and 
loss of balance, is the tax which all action 
must pay. Act, if you like, — but you do it at 
your peril. Men's actions are too strong for 
them. Show me a man who has acted, and 
who has not been the victim and slave of his 
action. What they have done commits and 
enforces them to do the same again. The first 
act, which was to be an experiment, becomes 
a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his 
aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he 
and his friends cleave to the form, and lose 
the aspiration. The Quaker has established 
Quakerism, the Shaker has established his 
monastery and his dance ; and, although each 
prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repeti- 
tion, which is anti-spiritual. But where are his 
new things of to-day? In actions of enthu- 
siasm, this drawback appears : but in those 



(5octbe ; or, Zbe TKHritcr 247 



lower activities, which have no higher aim 
than to make us more comfortable and more 
cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that 
steal and lie, actions that divorce the specu- 
lative from the practical faculty, and put a ban 
on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else 
but drawback and negation. The Hindoos 
write in their sacred books, " Children only, 
and not the learned, speak of the speculative 
and the practical faculties as two. They are 
but one for both obtain the selfsame end, and 
the place which is gained by the followers of 
the one, is gained by the followers of the other. 
That man seeth, who seeth that the specula- 
tive and the practical doctrines are one." 
For great action must draw on the spiritual 
nature. The measure of action is the senti- 
ment from which it proceeds. The greatest 
action may easily be one of the most private 
circumstances. 

This disparagement will not come from the 
leaders, but from inferior persons. The robust 
gentlemen who stand at the head of the prac- 
tical class, share the ideas of the time, and 
have too much sympathy with the speculative 
class. It is not from men excellent in any 
kind, that disparagement of any other is to be 
looked for. With such, Talleyrand's question 
is ever the main one ; not, is he rich ? is he 
committed ? is he well-meaning ? has he this 
or that faculty ? is he of the movement ? is he 
of the establishment ? — but, Is he anybody / 



248 , IRepresentative /Kscn 



does he stand for something ? He must be 
good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, 
all that State-street, all that the common sense 
of mankind asks. Be real and admirable, 
not as we know, but as you know. Able men 
do not care in what kind a man is able, so 
only that he is able. A master likes a master, 
and does not stipulate whether it be orator, 
artist, craftsman, or king. 

Society has really no graver interest than 
the well-being of the literary class. And it is 
not to be denied that men are cordial in their 
recognition and welcome of intellectual accom- 
plishments. Still the writer does not stand with 
us on any commanding ground. I think this 
to be his own fault. A pound passes for a 
pound. There have been times when he was 
a sacred person; he wrote Bibles; the first 
hymns ; the codes ; the epics ; tragic songs ; 
Sibylline verses ; Chaldean oracles ; Laconian 
sentences, inscribed on temple walls. Every 
word was true, and woke the nations to new 
life. He wrote without levity, and without 
choice. Every word was carved before his 
eyes, into the earth and sky ; and the sun and 
stars were only letters of the same purport ; and 
of no more necessity. But how can he be 
honored, when he does not honor himself; 
when he loses himself in the crowd ; when he 
is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, 
ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless 
public ; when he must sustain with shameless 



Ooetbe ; or, G^be IClrlter 249 



advocacy some bad government, or must bark, 
all the year round, in opposition ; or write con- 
ventional criticism, or profligate novels ; or, 
at any rate, write without thought, and without 
recurrence, by day and by night, to the sources 
of inspiration ? 

Some reply to these questions may be 
furnished by looking over the list of men of 
literary genius in our age. Among these, no 
more instructive name occurs than that of 
Goethe, to represent the power and duties of 
the scholar or writer. 

I described Bonaparte as a representative 
of the popular external life and aims of the 
nineteenth century. Its other half, its poet, is 
Goethe, a man quite domesticated in the cent- 
ury, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, im- 
possible at any earlier time, and taking away, 
by his colossal parts, the reproach of weak- 
ness, which, but for him, would lie on the 
intellectual works of the period. He appears 
at a time when a general culture has spread 
itself, and has smoothed down all sharp indi- 
vidual traits ; when, in the absence of heroic 
characters, a social comfort and cooperation 
have come in. There is no poet, but scores 
of poetic writers ; no Columbus, but hundreds 
of post-captains, with transit-telescope, barom- 
eter, and concentrated soup and pemmican ; 
no Demosthenes, no Chatham, but any num- 
ber of clever parliamentary and forensic 
debaters ; no prophet or saint, but colleges of 



250 IRepresentative /iBen 



divinity ; no learned man, but learned soci- 
eties, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and book- 
clubs, without number. There was never such 
a miscellany of facts. The world extends it- 
self like American trade. We conceive Greek 
or Roman life, — life in the middle ages, — to 
be a simple and comprehensible affair ; but 
modern life to respect a multitude of things, 
which is distracting. 

Goethe was the philosopher of this multi- 
plicity ; hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and 
happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of 
facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, 
to dispose of them with ease ; a manly mind, 
unembarrassed by the variety of coats of con- 
vention with which life had got encrusted, 
easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and 
to draw his strength from nature, with which 
he lived in full communion. What is strange, 
too, he lived in a small town, in a petty state, 
in a defeated state, and in a time when Ger- 
many played no such leading part in the 
world's affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons 
with any metropolitan pride, such as might 
have cheered a French, or English, or, once, a 
Roman or Attic genius. Yet there is no trace 
of provincial limitation in his muse. He is 
not a debtor to his position, but was born 
with a free and controlling genius. 

The Helena, or the second part of Faust, is a 
philosophy of literature set in poetry ; the work 
of one who found himself the master of his- 



(5oetbe; or, ZTbe TiXflntcr 251 



tories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, and 
national literatures, in the encyclopaedical 
manner in which modern erudition, with its 
international intercourse of the whole earth's 
population, researches into Indian, Etruscan, 
and all Cyclopaean arts, geology, chemistry, 
astronomy ; and every one of these kingdoms 
assuming a certain aerial and poetic character, 
by reason of the multitude. One looks at a 
king with reverence ; but if one should chance 
to be at a congress of kings, the eye would 
take liberties with the peculiarities of each. 
These are not wild miraculous songs, but 
elaborate form^, to which the poet has con- 
fided the results of eighty years of observation. 
This reflective and critical wisdom makes the 
poem more truly the flower of this time. It 
dates itself. Still he is a poet, — poet of a 
prouder laurel than any contemporary, and, 
under this plague of microscopes (for he seems 
to see out of every pore of his skin), strikes 
the harp with a hero's strength and grace. 

The wonder of the book is its superior in- 
telligence. In the menstruum of this man's 
wit, the past and the present ages, and their 
religions, politics, and modes of thinking, are 
dissolved into archetypes and ideas. XVhat 
new mythologies sail through his head ! The 
Greeks said, that Alexander went as far as 
Chaos ; Goethe went, only the other day, as 
far ; and one step farther he hazarded, and 
brought himself safe back. 



252 TRepresentative /iRen 



There is a heart-cheering freedom in his 
speculation. The immense horizon which 
journeys with us lends its majesties to trifles, 
and to matters of convenience and necessity, 
as to solemn and festal performances. He was 
the soul of his century. If that was learned, 
and had become, by population, compact 
organization, and drill of parts, one great 
Exploring Expedition, accumulating a glut of 
facts and fruits too fast for any hitherto-existing 
savants to classify, this man's mind had ample 
chambers for the distribution of all. He had 
a power to unite the detached atoms again by 
their own law. He has clothed our modern 
existence with poetry. Amid littleness and 
detail, he detected the Genius of life, the old 
cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us, 
and showed that the dulness and prose we 
ascribe to the age was only another of his 
masks : — 

" His very flight is presence in disguise : 

that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue 
dress, and was not a whit less vivacious or 
rich in Liverpool or the Hague, than once iu 
Rome or Antioch. He sought him in public 
squares and main streets, in boulevards and 
hotels ; and, in the solidest kingdom of routine 
and the senses, he showed the lurking daemonic 
power ; that, in actions of routine, a thread 
of mythology and fable spins itself ; and this, 



(3octbe ; or, ^be IKariter 253 



by tracing the pedigree of every usage and 
practice, every institution, utensil, and means, 
horne to its origin in the structure of man. 
He had an extreme impatience of conjecture 
and of rhetoric. " I have guesses enough of 
my own ; if a man write a book, let him 
set down only what he knows." He writes in 
the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great 
deal more than he writes, and putting ever 
a thing for a word. He has explained the 
distinction between the antique and the 
modern spirit and art. He has defined art, 
its scope and laws. He has said the best 
things about nature that ever were said. He 
treats nature as the old philosophers, as the 
seven wise masters did, — and, with whatever 
loss of French tabulation and dissection, poetry 
and humanity remain to us; and' they have 
some doctoral skill. Eyes are better, on the 
whole, than telescopes or microscopes. He 
has contributed a key to many parts of nature, 
through the rare turn for unity and simplicity 
in his mind. Thus Goethe suggested the 
leading idea of modern botany, that a leaf, or 
the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and 
that every part of the plant is only a trans- 
formed leaf to meet a new condition ; and, by 
varying the conditions, a leaf may be convert- 
ed into any other organ, and any other organ 
into a leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he 
assumed that one vertebra of the spine might 
be considered the unit of the skeleton ; the 



254 TRepreaentativc /RScn 



head was only the uppermost vertebra trans- 
formed. " The plant goes from knot to knot, 
closing, at last, with the flower and the seed. 
So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from 
knot to knot, and closes with the head. Men 
and the higher animals are built up through 
the vertebrae, the powers being concentrated 
in the head." In optics, again, he rejected 
the artificial theory of seven colors, and con- 
sidered that every color was the mixture of 
light and darkness in new proportions. It is 
really of very little consequence what topic he 
writes upon. He sees at every pore, and has 
a certain gravitation towards truth. He will 
realize what you say. He hates to be trifled 
with, and to be made to say over again some 
old wife's fable, that has had possession of 
men's faith these thousand years. He may as 
well see if it is true as another. He sifts it. 
I am here, he would say, to be the measure 
and judge of these things. Why should I 
take them on trust ? And, therefore, what 
he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, 
of manners, property, of paper money, of 
periods of beliefs, of omens, of luck, or what- 
ever else, refuses to be forgotten. 

Take the most remarkable example that 
could occur of this tendency to verify every 
term in popular use. The Devil had played 
an important part in mythology in all times. 
Goethe would have no word that does not 
cover a thing. The same measure will still 



0octbc; or, Zbc 'Mxitcx 255 



serve : " I have never heard of any crime 
which I might not have committed." So he 
flies at the throat of this imp. He shall be 
real ; he shall be modern ; he shall be Euro- 
pean ; he shall dress like a gentleman, and 
accept the manner, and walk in the streets, 
and be well initiated in the life of Vienna, and 
of Heidelberg, in 1820, — or he shall not exist. 
Accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic 
gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, 
brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of look- 
ing in books and pictures, looked for him in 
his own mind, in every shade of coldness, 
selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or 
in solitude, darkens over the human thought, — 
and found that the portrait gained reality and 
terror by everything he added, and by every- 
thing he took away. He found that the essence 
of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow 
about the habitations of men, ever since they 
were men, was pure intellect, applied, — as 
always there is a tendency, — to the service of 
the senses : and he flung into literature, in his 
Mephistopheles, the first organic figure that 
has been added for some ages, and which will 
remain as long as the Prometheus. 

I have no design to enter into any analysis 
of his numerous works. They consist of 
translations, criticism, dramas, lyric and every 
other description of poems, literary journals, 
and portraits of distinguished men. Yet I can- 
not omit to specify the Wilhelm Meister. 



■J2z6 IRepresentative /Bben 



Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, 
•the first of its kind, called by its admirers the 
■only delineation of modern society, — as if 
other novels, those of Scott, for example, dealt 
with costume and condition, this with the spirit 
of life. It is a book over which some veil is 
•still drawn. It is read by very intelligent 
persons with wonder and delight. It is pre- 
ferred by some such to Hamlet, as a work of 
•genius. I suppose no book of this century 
can compare with it in its delicious sweetness, 
so new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying it 
with so many and so solid thoughts, just in- 
sights into life, and manners, and characters ; 
so inan)' good hints for the conduct of life, so 
many unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere, 
and never a trace of rhetoric or dulness. A 
very provoking book to the curiosity of young 
men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. 
Lovers of light reading, those who look in it 
for the entertainment they find in a romance, 
are disappointed. On the other hand, those 
who begin it with the higher hope to read in it 
a worthy history of genius, and the just award 
of the laurel to its toils and denials, have also 
reason to complain. We had an English 
romance here, not long ago, professing to em- 
body the hope of a new age, and to unfold the 
political hope of the party called "Young 
England," in which the only reward of virtue 
is a seat in parliament, and a peerage. Goethe's 
rom.ance has a conclusion as lame and immoral. 



(3octbe; or, Zbc Mriter 257 



George Sand, in Consuelo and its continuation, 
has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. 
In the progress of the story, the characters of 
the hero and heroine expand at a rate that 
shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic 
convention : they quit the society and habits 
of their rank ; they lose their wealth ; they 
become the servants of great ideas, and of the 
most generous social ends ; until, at last, the 
hero, who is the centre and fountain of an 
association for the rendering of the noblest ben- 
efits to the human race, no longer answers to his 
own titled name : it sounds foreign and remote 
in his ear. 

" I am only man," he says ; " I breathe and 
work for man," and this in poverty and extreme 
sacrifices. Goethe's hero, on the contrary, 
has so many weaknesses and impurities, and 
keeps such bad company, that the sober 
English public, when the book was translated, 
were disgusted. And yet it is so crammed 
with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and 
with knowledge of laws ; the persons so truly 
and subtly drawn, and with such few strokes, 
and not a word too much, the book remains 
ever so new and unexhausted, that we must 
even let it go its way, and be willing to get 
what good from it we can, assured that it has 
only begun its office, and has millions of readers 
yet to serve. 

The argument is the passage of a democrat 
to the aristocracy, using both words in their 
17 



258 IReprcscntativc USscn 



best sense. And this passage is not made in 
any mean or creeping way, but through the 
hall door. Nature and character assist, and 
the rank is made real by sense and probity in 
the nobles. No generous youth can escape 
this charm of reality in the book, so that it is 
highly stimulating to intellect and courage. 

The ardent and holy Novalis characterized 
the book as " thoroughly modern and prosaic ; 
the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is 
the poetry of nature ; the wonderful. The 
book treats only of the ordinary affairs of 
m^n : it is a poeticized civic and domestic 
story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated 
as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming : " — and 
yet, what is also characteristic, NovaHs soon 
returned to this book, and it remained his 
favorite reading to the end of his life. 

What distinguishes Goethe for French and 
English readers, is a property which he shares 
with his nation, — a habitual reference to in- 
terior truth. In England and in America, 
there is a respect for talent ; and, if it is exerted 
in support of any ascertained or intelligible 
interest or party, or in regular opposition to 
any, the public is satisfied. In France, there 
is even a greater delight in intellectual brill- 
iancy, for its own sake. And, in all these coun- 
tries, men of talent write from talent. It is 
enough if the understanding is occupied, the 
taste propitiated, — so many columns so many 
hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. 



©oet&e ; or, Cbe liantcr 259 



The German intellect wants the French spright- 
liness, the fine practical understanding of the 
English, and the American adventure ; but it 
has a certain probity, which never rests in a 
superficial performance, but asks steadily, To 
what end ? A German public asks for a con- 
trolling sincerity. Here is activity of thought ; 
but what is it for ? What does the man mean ? 
Whence, whence, all these thoughts ? 

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There 
must be a man behind the book ; a personality 
which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the 
doctrines there set forth, and which exists to 
see and state things so, and not otherwise ; 
holding things because they are things. If 
he cannot rightly express himself to-day, the 
same things subsist, and will open themselves 
to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind, 
— the burden of truth to be declared, — more 
or less understood ; and it constitutes his busi- 
ness and calling in the world, to see those facts 
through, and to make them known. What 
signifies that he trips and stammers ; that his 
voice is harsh or hissing ; that his method or 
his tropes are inadequate ? That message will 
find method and imagery, articulation and 
melody. Though he were dumb, it would 
speak. If not, — if there be no such God's 
word in the man, — what care we how adroit, 
how fluent, how brilliant he is ? 

It makes a great difference to the force of 
any sentence, whether there be a man behind 



26o IRcprescntatire /l&cn 



it, or no. In the learned journal, in the influ- 
ential newspaper, I discern no form ; only some 
irresponsible shadow ; oftener some monied 
corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in 
the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass 
for somebody. But, through every clause and 
part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes 
of the most determined of men : his force and 
terror inundate every word : the commas and 
dashes are alive ; so that the writing is athletic 
and nimble, — can go far and live long- 
In England and America, one may be an 
adept in the writing of a Greek or Latin poet, 
without any poetic taste or fire. That a man 
has spent years on Plato and Proclus, does 
not afford a presumption that he holds heroic 
opinions, or undervalues the fashions of his 
town. But the German nation have the most 
ridiculous good faith on these subjects : the 
student, out of the lecture-room, still broods 
on the lessons; and the professor cannot di- 
vest himself of the fancy, that the truths of 
philosophy have some application to Berlin 
and Munich. This earnestness enables them 
to out-see men of much more talent. Hence, al- 
most all the valuable distinctions which are cur- 
rent in higher conversation, have been derived 
to us from Germany. But, whilst men distin- 
guished for wit and learning, in England and 
France, adopt their study and their side with 
a certain levity, and are not understood to be 
very deeply engaged, from grounds of charac- 



(5oetbe; or, ^bc liXIldtcr 261 



ter, to the topic or the part they espouse, — 
Goethe, the head and body of the German 
nation, does not speak from talent, but the 
truth shines through : he is very wise, though 
his talent often veils his wisdom. However 
excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat 
better in view. It awakens my curiosity. He 
has the formidable independence which con- 
verse with truth gives : hear you, or forbear, 
his fact abides ; and your interest in the writer 
is not confined to his story, and he dismissed 
from memory, when he has performed his task 
creditably, as a baker when he has left his 
loaf ; but his work is the least part of him. 
The old Eternal Genius who built the world 
has confided himself more to this man than ta 
any other. I dare not say that Goethe as- 
cended to the highest grounds from which 
genius has spoken. He has not worshipped 
the highest unity ; he is incapable of a self- 
surrender to the moral sentiment. There are 
nobler strains in poetry than any he has 
sounded. There are writers poorer in talent, 
whose tone is purer, and more touches the. 
heart. Goethe can never be dear to men. 
His is not even the devotion to pure truth ; 
but to truth for the sake of culture. He has 
no aims less large than the conquest of 
universal nature, of universal truth, to be his 
portion ; a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, 
nor overawed ; of a stoical self-command and 
self-denial, and having one test for all men, — 



262 TReprescntativc f^cn 



What can you teach me J All possessions, are 
valued by him for that only ; rank, piivileges, 
health, time, being itself. 

He is the type of culture, the amateur of 
all arts, and sciences, and events ; artistic, but 
not artist ; spiritual, but not spiritualist. There 
is nothing he had not right to know ; there is 
no weapon in the army of universal genius he 
did not take into his hand, but with peremptory 
heed that he should not be for a moment 
prejudiced by his instruments. He lays a ray 
of light under every fact, and between himself 
and his dearest property. From him nothing 
was hid, nothing withholden. The lurking 
daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the 
daemons ; and the metaphysical elements took 
form. "Piety itself is no aim, but only a 
means whereby, through purest inward peace, 
we may attain to highest culture." And his 
penetration of every secret of the fine arts will 
make Goethe still more statuesque. His af- 
fections help him, like women employed by 
Cicero to worm out the secret of conspirators. 
Enmities he has none. Enemy of him you 
may be, — if so you shall teach him aught 
which your good-will cannot, — were it only 
what experience will accrue from your ruin. 
Enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. 
He cannot hate anybody ; his time is worth 
too much. Temperamental antagonisms may 
be suffered, but like feuds of emperors, who 
fight dignifiedly across kingdoms. 



(5octbe; or, Zbc Writer 263 



His autobiography, under the title of " Poetry 
and Truth Out of My Life," is the expression 
of the idea, — now famiUar to the world through 
the German mind, but a novelty to England, 
Old and New, when that book appeared,^ 
that a man exists for culture ; not for what he 
can accomplish, but for what can be accom- 
plished in him. The reaction of things on the 
man is the only noteworthy result. An in- 
tellectual man can see himself as a third per- 
son ; therefore his faults and delusions interest 
him equally with his successes. Though he 
wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to 
know the history and destiny of man ; whilst 
the clouds of egotists drifting about him are 
only interested in a low success. 

This idea reigns in the Dichtung luid Wahr- 
heit, and directs the selection of the incidents ; 
and nowise the external importance of events, 
the rank of the personages, or the bulk of in- 
comes. Of course, the book affords slender 
materials for what would be reckoned with us 
a " Life of Goethe ; " — few dates ; no corre- 
spondence ; no details of offices or employ- 
ments ; no light on his marriage ; and, a period 
of ten years, that should be the most active in 
his life, after his settlement at Weimar, is sunk 
in silence. Meantime, certain love-affairs, 
that came to nothing, as people say, have the 
strangest importance : he crowds us with de- 
tail : — certain whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, 
and religions of his own invention, and, es- 



264 TRcprcBentativc /IBcn 



pecially his relations to remarkable minds, 
and to critical epochs of thought : — these he 
magnifies. His " Daily and Yearly Journal," 
his " Italian Travels," his " Campaign in 
France," and the historical part of his 
" Theory of Colors," have the same interest. 
In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler, Roger 
Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Voltaire, etc. ; and 
the charm of this portion of the book consists 
in the simplest statement of the relation betwixt 
these grandees of European scientific history 
and himself ; the mere drawing of the lines 
from Goethe to Kepler, from Goethe to Bacon, 
from Goethe to Newton. The drawing of the 
line is for the time and person, a solution of 
the formidable problem, and gives pleasure 
when Iphigenia and Faust do not, without any 
cost of invention comparable to that of Iphi- 
genia and Faust. 

This lawgiver of art is not an artist. Was it 
that he knew too much, that his sight was micro- 
scopic, and interfered with the just perspec- 
tive, the seeing of the whole ? He is fragment- 
ary ; a writer of occasional poems, and of an 
encyclopaedia of sentences. Wlien he sits 
down to write a drama or a tale, he collects 
and sorts his observations from a hundred 
sides, and combines them into the body as 
fitly as he can. A great deal refuses to in- 
corporate : this he adds loosely, as letters of 
the parties, leaves from their journals, or the 
like. A great deal still is left that will not 



Goztbe ; or, Zbc IKIlntcr 265 



find any place. This the bookbinder alone 
can give any cohesion to : and, hence, not- 
withstanding the looseness of many of his 
works, we have volumes of detached para- 
graphs, aphorisms, xenien^ etc. 

1 suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew 
out of the calculations of self-culture. It was 
the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who 
loved the world out of gratitude ; who knew 
where libraries, galleries, architecture, labora- 
tories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and 
who did not quite trust the compensations 
of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved 
Athens ; Montaigne, Paris ; and Madame de 
Stael said, she was only vulnerable on that 
side (namely, of Paris). It has its favorable 
aspect. All the geniuses are usually so ill- 
assorted and sickly, that one is ever wishing 
them somewhere else. We seldom see any- 
body who is not uneasy or afraid to live. 
There is a slight blush of shame on the cheek 
of good men and aspiring men, and a spice of 
caricature. But this man was entirely at 
home and happy in his century and the world. 
None was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed 
the game. In this aim of culture, which is 
the genius of his works, is their power. The 
idea of absolute, eternal truth, without refer- 
ence to my own enlargement by it, is higher. 
The surrender to the torrent, of poetic inspira- 
tion is higher ; but compared with any motives 
on which books are written in England and 



266 IRcpusentaXivz U^cn 



America, this is very truth, and has the power 
to inspire which belongs to truth. Thus has 
he brought back to a book some of its ancient 
might and dignity. 

Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time 
and country, when original talent was oppressed 
under the load of books, and mechanical 
auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, 
taught men how to dispose of this mountainous 
miscellany, and make it subservient. I join 
Napoleon with him, as being both representa- 
tives of the impatience and reaction of nature 
against the morgue of conventions, — two stern 
realists, who, with their scholars, have severally 
set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and 
seeming, for this time, and for all time. This 
cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or 
provocation, drawing his motive and his plan 
from his own breast, tasked himself with stints 
for a giant, and, without relaxation or rest, 
except by alternating his pursuits, worked on 
for eighty years with the steadiness of his first 
zeal. 

It is the last lesson of modern science, that 
the highest simplicity of structure is produced, 
not by few elements, but by the highest com- 
plexity. Man is the most composite of all 
creatures : the wheel-insect, volvox globator, 
is at the other extreme. We shall learn to 
draw rents and revenues from the immense 
patrimony of the old and recent.ages. Goethe 
teaches courage, and the equivalence of all 



(3oetbe ; or, CSsc 'Uttciter 267 



times : that the disadvantages of any epoch 
exist only to the faint-hearted. Genius hovers 
with his sunshine and music close by the 
darkest and deafest eras. No mortgage, no 
attainder, will hold on men or hours. The 
world is young ; the former great men call to 
us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, 
to unite again the heavens and the earthly 
world. The secret of genius is to suffer no 
fiction to exist for us ; to realize all that we 
know ; in the high refinement of modern life, 
in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact 
good faith, reality, and a purpose ; and first, 
last, midst, and without end, to honor every 
truth by use. 

THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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